Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, Illinois, recently opened the 4,840-square-foot BetRivers SportsBar, even though bettors can’t place wagers yet. Owners Rush Street Gaming and Churchill Downs Inc. are waiting for the Illinois Gaming Board to issue sports betting rules and regulations and to start taking sports betting license applications, which will cost $10 million. Rivers Casino General Manager Corey Wise said, “We want to be prepared and primed once we know what the Illinois regulatory requirements are. We’re ready to go once the state is ready to go.”
The new venue features a state-of-the-art 47-foot-wide ultra HD LED video wall that can broadcast up to 27 games at a time. The space also includes 13 additional TVs, 32 leather lounge chairs, a full-service island bar and more than two dozen bar seats with video gambling touch screens. In addition, there are five betting windows and a betting kiosk.
Rivers Casino also recently installed eight new table games just outside the sports bar, for a total of 67 throughout the facility. Also, thanks to the state’s new gambling law, Rivers is moving to expand gambling positions from 1,200 to 2,000 positions.
Also, Rivers, which opened in 2011 as Illinois’ tenth riverboat casino, recently became the first in the state to be approved by the state gaming board for land-based gambling. That has allowed Rivers to install 115 slot machines throughout the casino site, including the skywalk from the parking garage to the main gaming floor and at the front entrance. Previously games only could be installed above the casino’s single-level, 44,000-square-foot gambling floor, which was built over a 6-inch-deep, 144,000-gallon water tank. The new law removed the requirement that casinos be built over water.
Construction recently began on adding 750 new parking spaces to the 5-story, 1,550-space parking garage. The $24 million project will be completed in summer 2020.
