This week’s casino news starts off with key headlines from DraftKings and FanDuel. Both sports betting brands continue to duke it out and both have unique endeavors they are working on to expand their revenues. We’ve got the latest.
FanDuel Recently Approved For Downtown Las Vegas Sportsbook
Las Vegas regulators have just greenlit a FanDuel sportsbook downtown. The current plans are for a sportsbook to be coming to the Fremont Hotel & Casino, which will give patrons another reason to head to the “old” Las Vegas. The expectation is that the sportsbook will be ready to open up early in 2023.
The sportsbook should be over 2,300 square feet in total and should be open to guests throughout the whole year. 16 tables, 76 seats, and a 40-foot bar are among the positives of this particular spot, making it one of the most attractive for watching sports.
The Fremont Casino has been doing everything it can to grow – including a $50 million gambling expansion with FanDuel’s sportsbook being a big part of that. Going downtown has become a less attractive option for people visiting Las Vegas as The Strip has all more of hot spots.
This property first opened up to guests back in 1956 and has been renovated a handful of times over the decades. We’ll see if this injects some life into it.
DraftKings To Offer Sports Gambling At Detroit Shopping Mall
Sporting venues, bars, and many other venues have been getting into sports betting and now malls want in too. One particular shopping mall in Detroit is prepared to expand its services and DraftKings will help. Live! Hospitality & Entertainment has announced a brand-new venue at Somerset Collection that will work with DraftKings. It’s a supermall in the Motor City and DraftKings will facilitate the sports betting side of it.
Both parties have come out to announce this move and are thrilled with the idea. The venue is going to have 10,400 square feet of space in total and is set to be a standalone building close to Somerset Collection South.
The world’s No. 2 sports betting company has a handful of other tricks up their sleeve as well. There are expected to be a couple more locations that DraftKings will announce alongside Sports & Social over the next few months. The only company in the market that is outperforming DraftKings is FanDuel at the moment.
Golden Entertainment Comes To Agreement To Sell Maryland Casino
Golden Entertainment is no longer the official owner of one particular Maryland casino. It was just announced that the company was able to strike a deal to sell the Rocky Gap Casino Resort. The deal was worked out with Century Casinos and is going to cost them a whopping $260 million in cash to get it done. $56.1 million of that money is owed for the official transfer of operations at the property and the remaining cost is for the land and buildings associated with the casino.
The deal isn’t finalized at the moment though, it is set to be capped off sometime in the middle of 2023. Though they also have to work their way through regulatory approvals and other closing conditions before they can get to that point.
Now that Golden Entertainment decided to dish out one of their properties, they are left with nine other casinos. Each of them is located in the Southern Nevada area as well. The company finds itself with licenses in Illinois and Pennsylvania as well but they use these to operate video gaming terminals there. Speaking of video gaming devices, they operate them at over 1,100 varying locations in Nevada.
