Danville Casino Revenues Projected To Grow Big Time After Caesars Virginia Construction Is Complete

Caesars Virginia Construction In Danville, Virginia (3/28/2024)Photo by(Michael Swanson/Screenshot)

In May of 2023, Caesars Entertainment opened a temporary tent casino facility in Danville, Virginia. It is on the former Dan River Mills Schoolfield property, on which they are constructing a permanent casino and hotel facility on, that will be called Caesars Virginia once it opens.

The Virginia Lottery Board reported that the temporary facility generated $18,738,732.88, in revenue in the month of February, which resulted in $1,124,323.97 in tax revenue for the city of Danville. There is also a casino under construction in Bristol, Virginia, which also has a temporary facility, that made about $13 million in revenue, in February, and a permanent Rivers casino that opened in Portsmouth, Virginia, last year, which did around $25 million in revenue that month too,

When the Caesars Virginia permanent casino opens, it is expected to generate more revenue than the temporary facility is currently generating, and to even surpass the revenues of the Rivers casino in Portsmouth. When the city of Danville went through the process to approve the casino, it formed an advisory committee to get feedback from the community and plan on how to spend the tax revenue the city would receive from the casino.

In January, they released an updated report, in which they were able to analyze the results of the temporary casino facility and make some projections about the future. In this report, they estimated that the city will receive around $15 million in tax revenue from the casino in 2024 and then $26 million in 2025 and $39 million the year after, at which point the tax revenue would stabilize around that number.

In other words, the temporary casino has had a large impact on the tax revenue of the city budget, and really the overall growth in the community, and that trend is going to simply explode in the next few years after the opening of Caesars Virginia. The report does not try to project the revenues beyond 2028.

Estimates are that two million people will visit the casino every year. Of course, no one can predict the future and eventually there may be new casinos in North Carolina that create some competition. Last year, there was a failed draft bill to put three casinos in North Carolina, one of which would have been in Rockingham County. However, the bill got nowhere and had some serious flaws. For instance, it was crafted in such a way that it was designed so that one specific casino company would build and operate each of the three casinos, a fact that opponents of the bill said violated the ““perpetuities and monopolies” clause of the state constitution. Masses of people came out at a Rockingham County meeting against the casino push, last year, and it has been the big issue in this year’s county elections. The bad process put a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouth. It was not like that in Danville, where a lot of careful planning and negotiating took place, with multiple casino companies, before the city’s voters approved the Caesars casino deal with a 68.67% vote.

North Carolina passed a sports betting bill this year, but there are no plans to present another casino bill in the state legislature this year. The North Carolina House Speaker said the 2023 casino draft bill “just kind of went totally off the rails.”

With Caesars Entertainment, Danville has partnered with one of the nations top three gaming and hospitality industry leaders, and Caesars Virginia will not just be a casino, but a full blown entertainment resort, including multiple restaurants, bars, and a 50,000 square foot convention area. Currently over 400 people work in the temporary facility. That number is expected to more than double when Caesars Virginia opens it doors.

In January, Caesars held a “topping off ceremony” to celebrate the construction of the final floor of the hotel. At it, Chris Albrecht, the general manager of the casino property, said, of the construction, “We are opening this year. We are on target, and everything is moving along well.” The opening has been planned for the end of 2024. In a February conference call, for Wall Street analysts, the CEO of Caesars Entertainment said that it “is expected to open by year-end.” He told the analysts that doing the deal in Danville, and getting the Virginia state gaming license, “has been a home run out of the box.”

It’s been a home run for Danville too, because the deal was done in a smart way.

-Mike