This week’s casino news starts off with an odd partnership between two different tribes in different states. What could they possibly have in common? We’re taking a closer look.
Oklahoma, California Tribal Groups Form Partnership
An unlikely connection has just formed between two tribal groups: the Koi Nation of California and the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. The two tribes have partnered on a new casino plan that is reportedly in “predevelopment.” The Shiloh Casino & Resort will be the name of the new casino and is supposed to be located in Sonoma County near San Francisco.
There are already 78 casinos in the state of California and this new project will just add to that total in the Golden State. It is going to have a 200-room hotel, a spa, a meeting center and is supposed to employ over 1,110 full-time workers. This is in the middle of wine country and the hope is that some of the many tourists that go and visit the restaurants and wineries will stop off at the new casino.
The Chickasaw Nation may be the perfect partner in order to make this new project a reality. They are already the owners and operators of 23 different gaming establishments in the nation. One of the most popular being Winstar World Casino and Resort.
El Salvador Badly Wants A Metaverse Online Casino
El Salvador has been one of the country’s leading the way with cryptocurrency, so it’s no surprise they’re interested in metaverses. They’ve been wanting to modernize their own economy for quite a while now and it seems like they just locked their eyes on the next big project: NFT’s and metaverses. After buying a huge chunk of Bitcoin during the recent pullback, the latest news is the country is working to build a casino in the metaverse. The casino will be stationed in both the metaverse and on land and early expectations are that the casino will be named Astro Casino.
Nobody is quite sure about the investment that the country is making in order to get this casino to be a reality yet though. And it’s unclear how the metaverse and real-life casinos will work together. However, some short videos have already hit the internet regarding how the new metaverse casino would work. It would apparently have all sorts of slot machines and table games for you to play. Anyone that wants to visit will have to have access to VR headsets.
Nevada Suffers Tough Loss In Revenue During 2021
2021 revenue numbers were a major improvement for some casinos in Nevada but not all made it through the pandemic with flying colors. The Nevada Gaming Control Board just released the revenue numbers for the state throughout the fiscal year of 2021 and it was seen that they lost a total of $206.43 million. To make this even more surprising, they had lost money despite hauling in $16.12 billion in revenue.
Revenue comes from pretty all of the different games as well as rooms, food, entertainment, and drinks. Other casino-based attractions also net the state revenue. As for the losses, those come from different taxes and other expenses that a casino property may have such as operating costs.
In total, the 302 casinos in the area paid out roughly $802.31 million in gaming taxes and fees which is about 9.5 percent of their revenue for the year. At least gaming revenue accounted for about $8.45 billion of their total revenue numbers, which equates to 52.4 percent. This loss may be disappointing for the state, but it proves that they are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. While some casinos on The Strip in Las Vegas have been quick to rebound, other casinos just haven’t seen that type of tourism and foot traffic, and that’s impacted the bottom line.
