Caesars Entertainment has announced the impending closure of the Tunica Roadhouse Casino in Mississippi, which will put about 150 workers out of a job. The 31,000 sq. ft. property with nearly 700 slot machines and a handful of table games will shut its doors by the end of January, while the adjacent hotel will remain open.
The Horseshoe casino is surrounded by GoldStrike hotel and Tunica Roadhouse casino hotel(sister hotel).Originally we requested for two queen bed room, but changed this option to a kingsize bed a checkin. I checked in on Saturday evening and we were assigned a 10th floor room.
The closure comes during “persistent declines in business levels in the area stemming from increased competition,” according to Caesars.
The Tunica region continues to struggle and is now in the midst of 12-year decline in revenue. The area started to lose business to iGaming machines in neighboring Arkansas in 2005. The competition will only increase as Arkansas voted to legalize four casinos in November. Tunica’s eight casinos brought in $595 million in 2017, which represented a decline of 6 percent.
This is the second casino in Tunica that Caesars has opted to close. In 2014, the Las Vegas-based company opted to shut down Harrah’s Tunica Hotel & Casino to reduce debt. Caesars still owns and operates the nearby Horseshoe Tunica Casino, which is roughly twice as large as the Roadhouse.
Tunica was once home to a yearly World Poker Tour event. The $10,000 buy-in WPT World Poker Open ran at Binion’s from 2003 to 2005, and at the Gold Strike from 2006 to 2008, and featured notable winners such as the late Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott, Barry Greenstein, and Scotty Nguyen.
Mississippi has 28 total casinos and brought in $2.08 billion in gaming revenue in 2017, which represented a decline of 2 percent. While the Gulf Coast – Biloxi region remains strong as the eighth biggest gambling market in the U.S., the rest of the state’s land-based and riverboat casinos are losing ground. Additionally, those properties also have to contend with three large tribal casinos in the state operated by the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw Indians.