Maverick Gaming, which owns five casinos in rural Nevada, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, listing between $100 million and $500 million in liabilities.

For now, the Nevada properties — Maverick Casino & Hotel, Gold County Casino and the nongaming High Desert Inn in Elko; and the Wendover Hotel & Casino and Red Garter Hotel & Casino in West Wendover — are not the focus of the bankruptcy proceedings and will continue operating as normal.

The bankruptcy covers corporate financing issues and does not involve any of the operations. 

Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Mike Dreitzer said the agency is monitoring the bankruptcy proceedings, while officials from the two rural Nevada communities said they only became aware of the filings when contacted by The Nevada Independent.

Combined, the five Nevada properties have more than 1,200 hotel rooms, nearly 1,700 slot machines and 43 table games.

West Wendover City Manager Chris Melville wrote in an email that the city “will keep abreast of the issue” and said he was glad neither property was slated for closure.

“This is the first that I’ve heard of Maverick’s challenges,” Elko Mayor Reece Keener wrote in an email. “These properties have been an Elko staple for more than a generation, and I’m confident that they will recover from this setback.”  

Privately held Maverick, which is headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, had nearly two dozen licensed card rooms in the state that primarily surround the Seattle area. The cardrooms are limited to 15 table games — baccarat, poker and variations of blackjack.

Following the bankruptcy announcement, which was filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of Texas, Maverick posted on its website that it was closing four of the Seattle-area card rooms. 

According to the filing, Maverick owed $315 million across several loans. A commitment letter for $22.5 million debtor-in-possession financing was also referenced in the filing. The financing allows Maverick to continue operating while it reorganizes its debts and ensures operations are maintained and employees and suppliers are paid ahead of the company potentially emerging from bankruptcy. 

Maverick also owns three casinos in Colorado, located in gaming communities outside of Denver — the Dragon Tiger and Grand Z Casino in Central City and Z Casino in Black Hawk. 

Maverick CEO Eric Persson could not be reached for comment. A Seattle-based public relations firm that has worked for Maverick did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Persson’s gaming career includes more than a decade with Las Vegas Sands, overseeing the company’s global slot machine operations on the Strip, Macau and Singapore. He also served as president of Aruze Gaming, with oversight over the slot machine manufacturer’s sales team in North and South America and Macau.

CBRE Analyst Colin Mansfield wrote in a research note that Maverick Gaming is the first gaming company to file for bankruptcy reorganization since 2023 and the first casino operator to take the route since the Caesars bankruptcy filing in 2017.

Mansfield said Maverick completed a debt exchange last year that was treated as a default — failure to repay its loans — under S&P Ratings' criteria.

Maverick’s growth in adding the Colorado casinos and additional cardrooms starting in 2018 involved financing from New York-based HG Vora Capital Management, a private investment firm. In 2020, Maverick refinanced its balance sheet to include a $310 million loan and a $55 million revolving line of credit with several financial backers, led by Deutsche Bank. 

The refinancing retired all debt held by HG Vora, but Persson said in a 2021 interview that the investment firm was still a financial partner with Maverick, having bought into a portion of Deutsche Bank’s refinancing.

As part of the refinancing, Maverick sold the land underneath its two Wendover casinos and its two Central City casinos to investment firm Angelo Gordon.

Maverick Gaming converted from a Nevada-based LLC to a Washington-based LLC in February 2021, according to filings with the secretary of state offices in both states, because of the cardroom ownership.

Persson failed to convince Washington lawmakers to legalize sports betting inside the state’s cardrooms in 2020 and 2021, which led the company to file a federal lawsuit claiming the state unlawfully granted Native American casinos a “discriminatory tribal gaming monopoly.” The lawsuit was dismissed in 2024.