Miss America 2020 will be crowned at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville Connecticut marking the second time the pageant has left its traditional Atlantic City home.
The pageant’s future in Atlantic City, where it was founded in 1921, has been uncertain after the Miss America Organization lost a subsidy to broadcast from the resort’s Boardwalk Hall. The pageant has been searching for a new home ever since and will now land at the Mohegan Sun.
“The Miss America Organization is proud to partner with Mohegan Sun as we return to our longtime NBC home,” said Regina Hopper, president and CEO of the Miss America Organization in a press release. “We are looking forward to a fresh take on this historic competition that will showcase the incredible women vying for the job of Miss America 2020.”
Ray Pineault, president and general manager of Mohegan Sun, said the pageant’s status as a major supplier of college scholarship money to women went into the casino’s decision to host the event.
“Miss America is a storied organization that has a long history of empowering women, providing tremendous educational resources to women and serving the overall public good,” he said in the release. “We’re thrilled to be hosting an impactful event like the Miss America Competition in December, and we look forward to working with both Miss America and NBC on what will be a tremendous evening.”
Some other changes for the pageant include it switching to the NBC network from ABC and will be broadcast on Thursday December 19, rather than its traditional broadcast the Sunday after Labor Day in September.
Though the pageant was devised in Atlantic City in 1921 as a way of extending the summer season, this marks the second time it has left the resort. The pageant was held in Nashville and Las Vegas from 2005 to 2012 before returning to Atlantic City.
However, in 2017 the pageant organization was embroiled in an email scandal that led to the ouster of its mostly male leadership, some of whom were revealed to have mocked contestants’ appearances, intellect and even sex lives.
A new largely female leadership emerged headed by former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, a former Miss America. That leadership then clashed with state pageant organizations over changes to the pageant’s format, including the elimination of the swimsuit competition in favor of more in-depth contestant interviews. Carlson then stepped down as head of the pageant.
The real nail in the pageant’s Atlantic City coffin, however, was the loss of a major subsidy from the New Jersey Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to broadcast the pageant for Boardwalk Hall. Over the past six years, the authority spent more than $20 million on subsidies for the pageant.
New Jersey officials opposed continuing the subsidy complaining that Atlantic City was not receiving promised marketing benefits for hosting the pageant.
It is not clear if the Mohegan Sun will subsidize the broadcast, but a spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Economic Development told the Press of Atlantic City that the state itself was not subsidizing the pageant.
