Harrah’s Casino in Tunica, Mississippi closed at midnight on Sunday, June 1, putting close to 1,000 people out of work. Tunica Convention & Visitors Bureau President and Chief Executive Officer Webster Franklin said, “I’d love to be able to sit here and spin that this is something good. But this is not good.” The facility also includes a convention center and RV park.
When the property opened in June 1996 as the Grand Casino it was the biggest casino between Las Vegas and Atlantic City. It became Harrah’s Tunica in May 2008, the largest of Caesars Entertainment’s holdings in the state.
The company announced plans to close the Harrah’s Tunica in March 2014 as its customer base declined by half in the last six years, from 3.4 million in 2007 to just 1.7 million in 2013. But the final blow most likely was Mississippi River flooding that caused the casino to close for nearly a month in May 2011.
R. Scott Barber, Caesars’ regional president for the area, said, “You typically divest when you have found a suitable buyer.” But he said the company had been seeking a buyer for four years and eventually decided to close Harrah’s Tunica because of high operating losses, the regional decline, the flood and the recession.
Nine casinos still are located in Tunica Resorts, formerly known as Robinsonville, once the third-largest casino location in the U.S. after Las Vegas and Atlantic City. But casino revenues have been dropping across the region. In April 2009, area casinos generated $112.5 million, falling to less than $80 million from the region’s 18 casinos in 2014.
Increased competition also is partly to blame. Allen Godfrey, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission, said, “There’s gambling everywhere. If you just want to gamble, you don’t have to go very far to do it.” Officials are concerned that other Mississippi casinos are not making up Tunica’s losses and Tunica County’s decline will impact the state.
Some state legislators have considered measures offering tax breaks or other economic incentives to existing casinos. However, Republican Governor Phil Bryant, who will face re-election in 2015, said he would veto any incentives to aid the gaming industry in Mississippi, despite its economic benefits.
