Caesars to stop all gaming at Tunica Roadhouse Casino.
Tourism officials said the Tunica gaming market is a $550-600 million industry, roughly half of what it was in its heyday in the late 2000s.
The reason for this drop-off is not because Tunica casinos got worse, it's because neighboring or nearby states started allowing casino gambling of their own. Florida in particular allowed slot-gaming at pari-mutual facilities in 2005 & 2008, this reduced the demand for Mississippi Casinos greatly. Also, North Carolina also authorized two Indian tribes to allow gaming, which sucked away the lucrative Atlanta market. Finally, Missouri legalized riverboat gaming in 1995, placing casinos in St. Louis and Kansas City which siphoned off those markets.
Because of this, Many parts of Mississippi are now overbuilt and casinos are either going away (the Roadhouse) or running along on the fumes of reduced revenue.
And don't think for a minute that Louisiana and Oklahoma haven't noticed this.
If you go to a casino in either Southern Oklahoma (Winstar or Choctaw), Boisser City, LA or Lake Charles, LA, a quick perusal of the license plates in the parking lot will tell you why they are all spending Millions in lobbying money to prevent Texas from ever opening casinos.
All of the plates are from Texas.
The casino operators in Louisiana and the Tribes in Oklahoma all understand that an open casino market in Texas would all but run them out of business. It would be the death-knell for the State's industry, remove from the government a fairly lucrative revenue stream, and cost thousands of jobs in states that cannot afford to lose them.
Despite all of this, there was always the hope that a savvy operator like Tillman Fertitta (owner of the Golden Nugget chain of casinos) would be able to lobby the Texas Lege to allow for casinos in Texas.
Once Fertitta purchased the Golden Nugget Lake Charles that hope was vanquished.
I use the word "hope" and "dream" but, to be honest, I've never thought Texas should have casino gaming. While casinos offer some people a better wage than they would otherwise afford the sad fact of the matter is they are net drains on the local economy.
Like it or not, most people don't handle gaming well, and those that don't handle it even worse when casinos are within easy reach. This is why I rarely suggest to someone I meet in a casino that they should consider moving to Las Vegas. And it's the same reason I don't want to see casinos in Texas.
But this story is a case-study in why that is never going to happen. There's too much money involved for people who understand the need to lobby (and pay large sums of money to) politicians and their campaigns.
Yes, the only solution for Houston's Astrodome is probably to turn it into a giant casino. It's also never going to happen.
So, tear it down already then.
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