For Tahoe casinos, minor league hockey helping keep market out of the penalty box
Lake Tahoe hosted two NHL regular-season games on an outdoor ice rink constructed on the 18th fairway of the Edgewood Tahoe Resort’s golf course without fans in attendance due to the pandemic. The first game between the Vegas Golden Knights and Colorado Avalanche began at noon but was suspended after one period as the ice melted in the sunshine. The game concluded later in the evening.
The nationally televised hockey games, with picturesque Lake Tahoe taking center stage, served as the initial puck drop. The opening two years later of the Tahoe Blue Events Center has turned Stateline into something of a hockey town.
That designation is just fine with the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority.
The 135,000-square-foot venue opened in September 2023 was built at a cost of $110 million to attract events that would help attract customers to resorts along Highway 50 during what tourism leaders refer to as “the shoulder seasons” — the spring and fall months that separate the summer’s lake activities and the winter ski season.
“The whole purpose of the events center was to help those months where visitation was slow and was always devastating to the market,” Visitors Authority CEO Carol Chaplin said in an interview. “It's brought people to the area when the market is normally very slow, but it’s also helped boost midweek business because of the smaller events we’ve been able to attract.”
Diversifying attractions is key for the future of Lake Tahoe gaming, which is second only to Reno among the size of individual gaming markets in Northern Nevada. Like the rest of the state, casinos on the south shore of the lake are facing a slowdown — gaming revenue is currently down more than 5 percent through June, according to the Gaming Control Board, after hitting $244 million in 2024 — the region’s third-highest single-year total.
The events center isn’t the only new part of Stateline’s face-lift — several Tahoe casino-resort operators have recently started renovation projects that included property rebrands — Hard Rock Lake Tahoe is now the Golden Nugget, while the historic Harvey’s name was replaced with Caesars Republic.
According to the Visitors Authority, Lake Tahoe has just north 3,000 hotel rooms, when lodging venues along the north shore and the California side on the water are considered. Caesars Republic is the largest property with 740 rooms, followed by the 539 rooms at Golden Nugget.
The expansion Tahoe Knight Monsters of the ECHL — a minor hockey league two notches below the NHL — drew almost 123,400 fans across 36 home games at the arena — an average of 3,400 per game in a venue with nearly 4,100 seats.
Chaplin said Tahoe Blue’s first fiscal year, which spanned just nine months, was responsible for $18 million in visitor spending and a total economic impact of $25 million to the Stateline market. She said visitor spending is expected to increase to $42 million in the recently concluded fiscal year, and total economic impact will also see a jump.
The team, which is affiliated with the Vegas Golden Knights, serves as a place for the NHL club’s younger players to start their careers. The Knight Monsters made the ECHL playoffs in its first season, which meant four additional home games.
The hockey team has increased interest in the sport around the venue, which has hosted youth hockey tournaments that has spread to smaller community ice arenas across the California state line in South Tahoe.
The center is managed by the Los Angeles-based Oak View Group, which manages more than 400 entertainment venues of all sizes worldwide, including the 35,000-seat Snapdragon Stadium at San Diego State and the 18,000-seat Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.
Tahoe Blue General Manager Kevin Boryczki, who was brought in by Oak View, said the arena had a dozen sellouts for the Knight Monsters. The team normally plays three-game home stands on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
“During ski season, the resorts are only open until a certain time,” Boryczki said. “So families might come to a hockey game. It works out for everybody.”
Some of the tourism boost comes from fans of the visiting teams. Chaplin said she was surprised when the Jacksonville Icemen arrived from Florida for the Knight Monsters' home opener with 200 fans.
Boryczki said the hockey team has been a great tenant.
“If we need to move things around a little bit to make space for a concert or a conference, they were a great partner to help make that happen,” he said.
The center has more than 50,000 square feet of space for meetings, conventions and exhibitions, including the 27,000-square-foot arena floor that transitions to the ice rink. Last week, the Tahoe Blue hosted a small gathering for the UNR physics department.
“Having events gives us the midweek business we never had before, which helps the community,” Chaplin said.
Strip’s largest landlord not concerned about recent gaming, tourism slides
VICI Properties owns the real estate for 10 major Strip resorts, including MGM Grand Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, Caesars Palace and The Venetian, and two large convention complexes.
So an analyst's question about Las Vegas’ sinking gaming and tourism numbers during VICI’s second-quarter earnings conference call last Friday wasn’t unexpected. The Strip accounts for 48 percent of the real estate investment trust’s more than $3.1 billion in annual rent revenue.
Simply put, VICI President John Payne said something had to give after multiple years of super-sized revenue growth (including the Super Bowl in February 2024).
“It’s not unexpected to see a period of normalization,” Payne said.
Strip gaming revenue was up less than 1 percent to $765 million in June. However, between April and June, the Strip had seen a nearly 2 percent decline and is down 3 percent since April 2024, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
Las Vegas also saw visitation decline 11.3 percent to 3.1 million tourists while Harry Reid International Airport experienced a 6.3 percent decline in overall passengers, which included a nearly 10 percent drop in international travelers.
Payne suggested the declines were just a “temporary issue” for Las Vegas. He echoed comments made by executives from Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International, who cited strong group business bookings for the last three months of 2025 and the first six months of 2026.
“We have conviction in both the staying power of the city as a global entertainment epicenter and in the creativity of our operating partners,” Payne said.
While gaming revenue has declined, overall visitor spending is also off. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said revenue per available room is down almost 14 percent in the first six months of 2025.
The metric covers gaming and non-gaming spending by visitors. Analysts said non-gaming, which includes hotel room costs, dining, shopping and entertainment, is more important to a resort operator’s bottom line.
Aramark takes an undisclosed percentage ownership in the Athletics
Hospitality provider Aramark Sports + Entertainment will become a minority owner in the Athletics through an agreement to oversee food and beverage offerings at the team’s future $2 billion Las Vegas stadium.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed by the A’s, which announced the partnership in a statement Thursday. In May, Sports Business Journal reported that Aramark would oversee food and beverage service at the under-construction stadium through a 20-year deal that includes a $100 million equity investment into the team.
Costs for the 33,000-fan capacity enclosed stadium at the intersection of East Tropicana Avenue and the Strip have continually risen since the ballpark was first announced in 2023. In an interview with The Nevada Independent last week in Sacramento, owner John Fisher confirmed the cost was above $2 billion.
Fisher has committed at least $1.1 billion toward the stadium’s development, while U.S. Bank and Goldman Sachs will loan the team $300 million for the construction. The A’s plan to use $350 million in public financing.
Site work is underway at the ballpark site, and the stadium is expected to open in 2028.
What I'm reading
💰 Black Sox, Ohtani’s interpreter and more: A look at prominent sports betting scandals — The Associated Press
A couple of Las Vegas connections are on the list.
✈️ From Canada to China, more than a dozen countries are advising their citizens about travel to the U.S. — Rachel Chang, Condé Nast Traveler
More bad news for international visitation to Las Vegas.
🎰 Tilman Fertitta shelves casino project on Las Vegas Strip — Eli Segall, Las Vegas Review-Journal
According to a company executive, the U.S. ambassador to Italy won't develop the 6.2-acre parcel because he is the largest stockholder in Wynn Resorts with 13 million shares.
News, notes and quotes
💸Indian gaming revenue sets a record in fiscal year 2024
Nationwide Indian gaming revenue topped a record $43.9 billion in the fiscal year that ended in 2024, according to the National Indian Gaming Commission. It takes more than a year for the commission to compile the data from 532 tribal casinos operated by 243 tribes in 29 states. The data is broken out into eight regions. The Sacramento region, which includes all of California and the northern half of Nevada, accounted for $12.1 billion — more than one quarter of the national total. Northern Nevada’s only tribal casino, the Wa She Shu Casino in Gardnerville, was closed by the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California in 2023. The southern half of Nevada, including Avi Casino Resort near Laughlin, which is owned by the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, is included in the Phoenix region that covers Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.