Michael Anthony Griffin Sr. grew up watching how things worked before he decided to run them. The CEO of National Business Center, Inc. in Knightdale, North Carolina came to the gaming business not as an investor or an industry transplant, but as someone who first understood it from the other side of the table.
Starting Where Most People Stay
Eastern North Carolina shaped Griffin early. He was one of twelve children raised in Hobgood, a small town where community and family structure were constants. He played baseball and football in high school and, by his own account, tried out for professional baseball before that path closed. What remained was a competitive instinct and a practical orientation toward work that would carry forward through a long stretch of years in customer service.
That stretch mattered. Griffin has described more than a decade working in customer service and, separately, developing familiarity with skill-based gaming as a participant before he crossed into the operational side. The distinction is not incidental. It shapes how he describes the decisions he has made since taking over as CEO of National Business Center, Inc. in March 2018.
What National Business Center, Inc. Actually Does
National Business Center, Inc. operates in the skill-based gaming sector, a category that sits at the intersection of entertainment technology and regulated business practice. Under Griffin’s oversight, the company has developed two distinct brands: Vegas-Style Skill Games, which includes a rewards program and an online casino component, and Blue Bull Gaming.
Griffin serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors across all three entities. The organizational structure reflects a deliberate consolidation of decision-making authority, with Griffin overseeing operations and development from the top of each branch.
The company’s footprint is North Carolina-based, centered in Knightdale. Skill-based gaming in this region operates within a specific and evolving regulatory environment, and Griffin has spoken publicly about responsible growth and the importance of personal accountability within the industry.
Building Through a Disruption
The years immediately following Griffin’s appointment as CEO did not offer a stable operating environment. The 2019 and 2020 period brought the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic to hospitality, entertainment, and gaming businesses across the country. Griffin has described navigating National Business Center, Inc. through that period as a significant operational challenge. The company continued its development trajectory through those years, which included the creation of the Vegas-Style Rewards program and the buildout of the Vegas-Style online casino.
These were not trivial undertakings. Moving a gaming operation into a digital environment requires coordination across technology, compliance, and customer experience functions simultaneously. Griffin’s background in customer service gave him a particular emphasis on how people interact with the product at each stage.
The Operator’s Perspective
There is a type of business leader who comes to an industry through credentials and another who comes through exposure. Griffin belongs to the second category. He has described his path as one that started at the player level, moved through an understanding of how the business operated from within, and eventually arrived at the CEO role through accumulated experience rather than a traditional executive pipeline.
He did not complete a college degree. That fact is relevant not as a limitation but as a context. The operational knowledge Griffin applied to building National Business Center, Inc. came from proximity to the work itself, from years in customer-facing roles, and from a deliberate effort to understand how skill-based gaming functioned as a business before attempting to lead one.
His personal interests reflect a similar orientation toward competition and precision. Golf, which Griffin plays as a club member, shares structural characteristics with the way he approaches business: patience, positioning, and an understanding that conditions change within a single round.
Responsible Growth as an Operating Standard
In public statements and press coverage, Griffin has returned consistently to the theme of responsible growth in skill-based gaming. He has called for clearer standards within the industry and emphasized personal control as a value that extends to both operators and participants.
This is not an abstract position for Griffin. He runs operations in a sector where public trust and regulatory standing are material business considerations. His approach to growth has been measured rather than rapid, focused on building infrastructure that can sustain what the company is developing rather than scaling ahead of operational readiness.
About Michael Anthony Griffin Sr.
Knightdale is not a gaming hub in the way that Las Vegas or Atlantic City carry that association. It is a mid-sized community outside Raleigh, and building a gaming enterprise there requires a different kind of institutional patience than operating in an established market.
Griffin is doing it anyway. National Business Center, Inc., Vegas-Style Skill Games, and Blue Bull Gaming represent a bet that skill-based gaming has durable commercial viability in North Carolina and that an operator who understands the customer experience from the inside has an advantage in building for it. Whether or not the industry develops the way Griffin expects, the structure he has built since March 2018 reflects a clear operational thesis and a willingness to lead it personally.
