Truckee Gaming has long focused up north. It’s now expanding with 2nd Vegas-area casino
Truckee Gaming doesn’t compete with the mega-resort casino operators. The company is gaming-centric and has built a loyal following throughout Northern Nevada. Now, it’s expanding in Southern Nevada.
As its name might suggest, most of Truckee Gaming’s portfolio is based not far from Northern Nevada’s scenic river.
But company CEO Ferenc Szony told the Gaming Control Board last week he sees an opportunity hundreds of miles south, in a city bouncing back. Two North Las Vegas casinos, Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho, never reopened after the statewide casino closures during the pandemic in 2020.
“You hear a lot more about North Las Vegas and we wanted to be a part of it,” said Szony, whose Reno-based company spent $20 million to acquire the 52-year-old Poker Palace Casino in North Las Vegas. The property on Las Vegas Boulevard is being renovated into Club Fortune North, to signify its connection with Truckee Gaming’s Club Fortune in Henderson.
Gaming revenue from North Las Vegas’ 15 casinos grew 4.6 percent in 2025 to $298 million, nearly matching the $302.5 million in gaming revenue produced by 17 casinos in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
The former Poker Palace will become the privately held Truckee’s 11th casino, nine of which are in Northern Nevada, including Reno, Sparks and Dayton. Szony said the company had been looking for another opportunity in the south for several years.
“This one really kind of hit because of where it’s at. We’re pretty optimistic,” he said. “The interior is going to be opened up and will be a pretty dramatic change from what it was.”
He plans to give the property a “far more contemporary look” when it reopens sometime in April.
Given that the veteran gaming operator compared the property’s former look to what would happen if “Excalibur and Circus Circus had a baby,” regulators said he seemed to be heading in the right direction.
Szony was familiar with Southern Nevada, having spent several years in the area as an operations executive with Herbst Gaming. After the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, he bought back several of the casinos he owned when his former company merged with Herbst.
“It’s like renovating a house. There is a punch list of things we need to get completed,” Szony said of the future Club Fortune, adding that he plans to bring back many of the more than 100 longtime Poker Palace employees who were let go when the casino closed in September for the renovations.
“We let all the former employees know that. They get the first shot and they retain their seniority,” Szony said.
Truckee Gaming operates the closest outlet for Reno residents to buy California Lottery tickets. The state’s lottery commission licensed a store adjacent to the Gold Ranch Casino & RV Resort in Verdi, where the lottery terminals sit on the California side of the state line in Floriston.
Given that his casinos offer unique gaming options, Szony told the control board he also plans to keep Poker Palace’s license to have parimutuel horse racing, one of the few off-Strip properties to have a racebook.
“The former owner thought that it was an important part of what he had done at the property, and with that, we wanted to make sure that we did that as well,” he said.
Szony is bringing privately owned Boomers Sportsbook in to manage the location, given the experience CEO Joe Asher has in operating full-scale race and sportsbooks. The control board recommended approval for the Boomers location in addition to new Boomers at Stockman’s Casino in Fallon and the Grand Lodge Casino in Incline Village.
Board Chairman Mike Dreitzer summed up the regulatory sentiment toward Szony.
“Obviously, you have been a long-standing licensee and very successful participant in Nevada gaming, so we welcome your involvement in North Las Vegas,” he said.
Titus uses long-shot maneuver to push forward stalled gaming tax deduction bill
Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) is throwing a last-minute Hail Mary pass to push congressional members to restore the 100 percent gambling loss deduction that was removed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump in July.
But will it fall incomplete?
Titus is using a discharge petition on her FAIR Bet legislation. If successful, a simple majority of House members can take a bill out of committee and onto the floor for consideration when no action has been taken.
The tax provision that goes into effect this year limits gamblers to a 90 percent deduction on their losses. That means a player who wins $100,000 and loses $100,000 will only be able to deduct $90,000 from their winnings, forcing them to pay taxes on $10,000 of essentially phantom income.
“My bill has sat in the Ways and Means Committee for eight months, despite commitments from Republicans to address the issue,” Titus said in a statement last week. “Now, a discharge petition is the needed path to right the fundamental wrong of forcing gamblers to pay taxes on money they never won.”
But will it work?
According to a report by Axios, seven discharge petitions filed in the past two years received the 218 signatures needed for a House vote. In the previous 40 years, just seven petitions received the required number of votes. At the end of the last year, House members used a discharge petition to authorize a three-year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told Axios the petitions were becoming “too common” and he would consider new House rules to make them harder to obtain.
Titus’ bill and similar legislation have found widespread support amongst the gaming industry.
Allegiant exceeds projections at decade mark, but live entertainment tax lags
Tickets for Las Vegas Raiders, Vegas Golden Knights and Las Vegas Aces home games are exempt from the state’s Live Entertainment Tax (LET). Legislative efforts to remove the home team exemption have long failed.
Lawmakers may take another crack at adding the 9 percent fee in next year’s session.
During a hearing last week in Las Vegas, an interim committee looking at tax revenue focused on the $1.9 billion Allegiant Stadium, whose 2025 economic impact of $2.4 billion exceeded its 2016 projections by almost 300 percent last year.
In addition, Las Vegas Stadium Authority Chairman Steve Hill presented a chart to the committee showing LET collections from events at the venue grew 83 percent above the 2016 projections — the only tax revenue stemming from the venue not showing a triple-digit increase.
While LET wasn’t applied to the Raiders’ home games, other large events helped boost the totals. LET was applied to Wrestlemania, which drew an attendance of more than 118,600 over two nights last April. It was also applied to the tickets purchased by the 70,482 attendees to the Terence Crawford-Canelo Alvarez fight in September.
Outside of Allegiant, there has been a large jump in LET collections, likely because of the $2.3 billion Sphere Las Vegas, which held its first events in September 2023, starting with U2’s residency. The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere has sold 2 million tickets between August and January, although rules to give individual taxpayers confidentiality make it hard to confirm the cause of the surge.
“Sphere may well be the biggest contributor to the increase in live entertainment tax,” Hill said. “We are not privy to that information.”
What I'm reading
🍸 COMMENTARY: As stakes increase, latest discovery battle adds intrigue to Vegas high-roller drugging dispute — John L. Smith, CDC Gaming Reports
A gambler’s lawsuit against MGM Resorts International could “rock the company to its core.”
🧳 The decline in visitors from Canada that hit the U.S. travel industry hard in 2025 shows no signs of slowing down — Rashaad Jorden, Skift
Canadian residents returning from the U.S. by car fell 26.8 percent in January. Airline return trips declined 17.8 percent.
News, notes and quotes
🎰 Sandoval could be the second governor in 50 years to have a gaming license
After he left the governor’s office in 1971, Paul Laxalt, who helped modernize Nevada’s gaming industry, was licensed for his partial ownership of the Ormsby House in Carson City. Now, more than 50 years later, Brian Sandoval is expected to become the only former governor to follow in Laxalt’s footsteps. Sandoval, the president of UNR, was recommended for licensing by the Gaming Control Board last week for his role as chairman of Resort World Las Vegas’ oversight board. The Nevada Gaming Commission is expected to make a final ruling on Feb. 26. Former Nevada Gov. Bob Miller served on the boards of Wynn Resorts and IGT in the mid-2000s, but was not licensed because the companies were publicly traded and he was an independent board member.
📩 Nevada senators want prediction markets out of sports betting
A letter signed by 21 Democratic senators, including Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), urged Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig to halt event contracts that involve gaming — including sports betting. “Prediction market platforms are offering contracts that mirror sportsbook wagers and, in some cases, contracts tied to war and armed conflict. These products evade state and tribal consumer protections, generate no public revenue, and undermine sovereign regulatory regimes,” wrote the senators.
🏀 Dumont to become Sands chairman and CEO on March 1
Las Vegas Sands Corp. officially named Patrick Dumont as the casino operator’s chairman and CEO. He will take over March 1, following the retirement of Rob Goldstein, who will continue to serve as a senior adviser through 2028. Dumont is the son-in-law of Miriam Adelson, the company’s largest stockholder. Company founder Sheldon Adelson died in 2021. Sands, which does not have any U.S. holdings, operates resorts in Macau and Singapore. The Adelson family is also the majority owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and Dumont is the team’s representative on the league’s Board of Governors.