With Sky River now open, Sacramento-area casinos aim for what’s next. How about go-karts?
Drive into Elk Grove north to Sacramento along Highway 99 and the billboards begin at about the same spot as the new Sky River Casino.
You see one for Jackson Rancheria Casino Resort, its billboard a straight shot east across the highway from the Elk Grove attraction. Rising above the Elk Grove Auto Mall, Lincoln’s Thunder Valley Casino Resort flashes its latest comedy booking. Keep driving and Cache Creek Casino entices you to cash in. Shingle Springs’ Red Hawk Casino and Hard Rock Casino in Wheatland tout their attractions.
This week, no fewer than two-dozen casino billboards were up on Sacramento County freeways.
The competition in the Sacramento area’s crowded tribal gaming landscape is not only clear from behind the wheel. It is also evident in the ever-evolving arms race for regional casino superiority as the Wilton Rancheria’s $500 million Sky River Casino opened its doors in a surprise August debut.
Consider:
▪ A new 150-room hotel and an all-ages entertainment center under construction at Red Hawk Casino & Resort in Shingle Springs.
▪ Large new spaces for music and other events at Thunder Valley Casino Resort in Lincoln.
▪ Ditto for another Sacramento-area newcomer Hard Rock Casino Resort Sacramento at Fire Mountain farther up the road in Wheatland.
And after years of struggle, first for federal tribal recognition, then to build a casino on tribal land, the Wilton Rancheria set out to make a statement. The tribe partnered with Las Vegas-based Boyd Gaming, which immediately promised Sky River, 15 minutes from Sacramento and the closest capital-area casino to the Bay Area, would become the region’s entertainment destination and one of the most popular and profitable tribal casinos in California.
Roll the dice in California
The gaming conglomerate Boyd has 11 casinos in Nevada and properties in nine other states, but Sky River marks its debut in the lucrative California market.
“We’re trying to create a compelling experience for people across the region,” Boyd spokesman David Strow said ahead of the casino’s groundbreaking in March 2021.
“This is one of the most compelling locations we’ve seen,” Strow said. “There is tremendous opportunity with this location.”
The area’s casinos in Amador, El Dorado, Placer, Yolo, Yuba, and now, Sacramento, counties are a fraction of the nearly 80 in California and northern Nevada as listed in the Indian Gaming Association’s annual Indian Gaming Report.
Tribal gaming in California is big business. Tribal gaming took in $7.62 billion in revenue. That was in a COVID-19 2020, the latest year data was available and a pandemic year that all but shut down gaming for a time in California.
The pandemic shut down casinos for months, so the 2020 revenue number was a full 21% off of the nearly $9.7 billion in pre-pandemic 2019 and stopped a streak of revenue gains that stretched back to 2017.
California and northern Nevada tribal gaming operations “still generated significant economic activity,” despite the pandemic,” according to the report.
“The competition here — they’re really professional” Chris Gibase, Sky River Casino president and chief operating officer, said from Sky River’s vast 100,000 square-foot gaming floor during a media tour of the new venue before its late-night opening last week. “They know what they’re doing. They’ve been here for a long time.”
“We’ll be very competitive,” Gibase added. “Our advantages are that we’ll have the newest place that’s very pretty. But our technology is a lot newer, so we can do a lot of things that our competitors can’t do at this point.”
Casinos are all in
But both United Auburn Indian Community’s Thunder Valley and Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians’ Red Hawk casinos, to name just two, have much to say about that. Both resorts are in the midst of major construction projects, investing hundreds of millions of dollars into new improvements that are raising the stakes yet again in Sacramento’s casino wars.
The Venue at Thunder Valley, the casino resort’s $100 million, 4,500-seat entertainment venue, is slated to open in early 2023.
In Shingle Springs, Red Hawk Resort & Casino is pouring $150 million into two projects.
Construction of its new, five-story, 120,000 square-foot, 150-room hotel in ongoing with plans to open later this year. The casino is also building, rising on top of its parking garage, an 85,000 square-foot amusement center, billed as a family-friendly destination. It will have a multi-level go-kart track, an 18-lane bowling alley, arcade, gaming rooms and golf simulators. A sports bar will open in early 2023.
On Friday, construction crews at Red Hawk were hard at work on both projects.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Tyler Bida, Red Hawk’s vice president of facility, and an El Dorado County native. “It’s been 14 years. Making (Red Hawk) a full-resort property is one of our main objectives. It’s something that the area has needed for a long time. It’s nice to be able to incorporate what the community wants with what we’re doing as well.”
Elk Grove antes up with slots and food
The long lines of traffic drive past those same billboards on Highway 99 into Sky River during its opening week show. It is the new kid in town, ready to establish itself as not only a gaming and entertainment destination, but a dining one as well.
The Elk Grove casino has 17 restaurants and bars spotlighting local wineries, breweries and restaurateurs, on site.
“The casino’s really nice — it offers the newest, latest machines, a variety of Asian-style games — but the restaurants, the bars, is what’s really going to wow people,” Gibase said. “If you like to eat out or if you like trying out different types of food, this is the place.”
It’s a smart play, said Ken Adams, a gaming industry analyst based in Reno. Adams closely follows tribal gaming in Northern California and casino developer Boyd Gaming.
“Gambling is a generic product. We rarely say, ‘Let’s go gamble. We say, ‘Let’s eat.’ If a casino has some options (beside gambling), it’s ‘By the way…’ or ‘They have the greatest steakhouse…,’” Adams said. “Boyd has been doing these local operations like this for 40 years in Las Vegas. They’ll adjust their market. They’re very sensitive to the market.’”
Boyd will also likely rely on tried-and-true strategies that served it well for decades in Las Vegas, Adams said.
“They say, ‘We need 25,000-50,000 people within a certain radius for our business model to work. That’s going to be our core business — the core business that lives in that area,” Adams said.
Sky River’s location also poses a new competitive threat to Thunder Valley as another tribal casino close to heavily-populated Sacramento and alongside a busy freeway.
Adams sees the benefits in visibility and advertising. Having a roadside location like Sky River is an “absolute advantage,” Adams said.
“The tribes can put up the (advertising) signs they want. That’s a huge advantage,” he said. “Some of those who have been going to other casinos — those casinos will note their absence.”
“If you look at the size of the investment, they did their market studies,” Adams said. “They don’t just automatically build the biggest thing they can build. They say, ‘We believe this is going to be the natural market.’ Thunder Valley and Sky River, these are the two that are the prime northern California investment.
Thunder Valley bets on track record
Doug Elmets, spokesman for Thunder Valley Casino Resort, acknowledged the new competition in Elk Grove, but framed it as a classic tale of youth vs. experience. The Lincoln casino marks its 20th anniversary this year.
Elmets said Thunder Valley’s longevity in the market, and its track record as a money maker; the casino’s stable workforce and working relationship with local government as well as its well-regarded resort hotel win out, adding a subtle swipe at the newcomer down the road: “It’s not something that happened overnight.”
“Thunder Valley is considered by most analysts as one of the most financially successful casinos in the U.S. largely because the United Auburn Indian Community has spent what it takes to stay ahead of the competition,” Elmets said in an email. “Another huge advantage we have is longevity. In the competitive post-pandemic employment market, customers routinely tell us that seeing team members they recognize is why they keep coming back.”
Talk to officials at any of the Sacramento-area casinos from Sky River to Thunder Valley and each seeks to be a “regional destination.”
Red Hawk’s plans: Go-karts, bowling and sports betting
So, too, at Red Hawk.
Thunder Valley and Hard Rock have planted their flags on the strength of their musical bookings. Sky River is carving out a space in the market focused on homegrown chefs, locally-grown wines and handcrafted brews. Red Hawk is doubling down on family entertainment.
Inside the shell of the planned 85,000 square-foot fun center, DeLugo and Bida wove past hard-hat construction workers and pointed out what those families will see in a few months’ time.
High above the floor, the curved outline of what will be a quarter-mile of elevated go-kart track, part of the multi-level kart racing that will be a feature of the center. To the left, space is cut out for 18 lanes of bowling and high-tech golf simulators.
Facing east toward the Sierra, a sports bar will features an indoor-outdoor deck and a planned 9-foot-by-27-foot multi screen video monitor bay that anticipates the advent of casino sports betting on the west side of Lake Tahoe.
“We made a conscious decision to differentiate ourselves,” said Bryan DeLugo, Red Hawk CEO. “We had an option. We wanted to be different, to bring in a different customer base. We’re the only one with a kids’ place (the casino’s Kids’ Quest children’s entertainment center). We’ve made a family destination to get families to come this way. We wanted something that they can’t get anywhere else — including Sky River.”
This story was originally published August 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
.JPG)