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Danville City Council OKs changes to casino agreement
A new casino resort being built less than three hours away near Charlotte, North Carolina, would not likely siphon many customers away from Caesars Virginia’s gaming facility, according to industry experts.
“It is difficult to predict consumer behavior with the upcoming casino development project in North Carolina, but it is likely that the convenience segment of gamblers will continue to patronize the Caesars Virginia property rather than travel two hours to Charlotte,” said Jane Bokunewicz, faculty director of the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming, Hospitality and Tourism at the Stockton University School of Business in Galloway, New Jersey.
Also, Caesars Virginia, which has been operating the temporary Danville Casino at Schoolfield since May 15, 2023, could attract new visitors from a farther distance to experience the added amenities of the full casino resort when it opens at the end of this year, Bokunewicz added.
On June 7, the Catawba Nation broke ground on a $700 million casino project — Two Kings Casino and Resort — in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, about 35 miles west of Charlotte.
The casino resort will be built in two phases, with the first expected to be complete in early 2026. The project is anticipated to create about 2,000 new jobs when complete.
The South Carolina-based tribe has been operating a temporary gambling facility at the site since 2021.
Chris Albrecht, general manager at Danville Casino/Caesars Virginia, would not comment for this story.
Danville City Councilman Lee Vogler pointed to Caesars Virginia’s status as the first-of-its-kind facility in Southside Virginia and the company’s position among other gaming providers.
A slot machine awaits players at the Danville Casino in Schoofield. Industry experts say Caesars Virginia should not be affected by a new casino being built near Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Caesars Virginia is going to be the premier destination for folks in Virginia, North Carolina and beyond,” Vogler told the Danville Register & Bee. “One of the reasons we chose Caesars as our partner was their ability to stand above the rest of the field when it comes to any other casinos that may or may not come into the marketplace.”
The Two Kings casino in North Carolina will not attract a large number of customers from Danville, but more from the region around Charlotte and surrounding areas, said Anthony Marino, a retired demography statistician who taught at Stockton University and has a background in monitoring the casino industry in Atlantic City.
The Charlotte area is near the South Carolina border, with the Catawba Nation casino about 165 miles southwest of Danville — or about a two-and-a-half to three-hour drive. Charlotte is about 135-140 miles from Danville, about a two-hour drive.
Marino referred to the concept of “propinquity” — or nearness, or the state of being close to something or someone — to say that customers will most likely frequent places that are closer and more convenient for them.
“They’re not going to normally travel by land more than two hours or so,” said Marino.
Caesars Virginia’s market is Southside Virginia and northern North Carolina.
“Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill [residents] would more likely head in that direction than to Charlotte,” Marino said.
The tri-city area is just a roughly 90-minute drive from Danville, whereas the Charlotte area is about two-and-a-half hours away from Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill.
However, gamblers seeking to stay overnight to enjoy amenities Charlotte has to offer may be willing to drive those extra miles, Bokunewicz said.
“Gamblers motivated by experiencing an overnight getaway to a destination like Charlotte, which has other attractions in addition to casino gaming, may decide to make the two-hour drive to visit a new location and experience all that Charlotte has to offer,” she said.
As for Atlantic City, it has nine casinos that operate in a vastly different market than those scattered in Virginia.
New Jersey residents voted to allow casinos in the state in 1976, under the condition that they could only open and operate in Atlantic City under the strict supervision of the state, Marino said.
For the first two decades afterward, Atlantic City had a monopoly on gambling until nearby states including Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut and Maryland began legalizing casinos.
Gambling establishments began opening up within an hour’s drive of Atlantic City, leading to a decline in its casinos’ customer volume and revenues.
“They experienced steady declines in gross gaming revenue each year from the peak of $5.2 billion in 2006 to a low of $1.6 billion in 2016,” Bokunewicz said. “Although the Great Recession also had an impact on gross gaming revenue during this period, much of the decline can be attributed to the opening of casinos in Pennsylvania.”
Atlantic City has gone down from 35 million visitor-trips in 2006 to about 18 million visitor-trips to its casinos, Marino said.
A large fraction of the loss in casino visitation to Atlantic City was from the convenience gambler segment, which includes those customers who gamble close to home and make frequent day trip visits rather than several overnight stays at a destination resort with a variety of amenities, Bokunewicz said.
“At some point, we once had 13 casinos in Atlantic City,” Marino said. “One closed, we had 12. Five of them closed and then we dropped to seven. A couple of years later, two new ones opened. The number of casinos will vacillate according to what the market will allow.”
Caesars Virginia should do a good job — through their casino hosts whose job is to identify frequent customers with a highly flexible gambling budget — of “comping” those patrons, Marino said.
For the wealthiest, biggest-spending customers, casinos offer free dinner, rooms or other amenities — worth about 25% to 35% of what that patron will spend on average — to entice them to gamble beyond what the establishment spends on those incentives, he said.
Those practices are especially common in larger markets with heavy competition among casinos, Marino said. A significant portion of a casino’s income comes from its richest clients, he said.
“About 20% comes from a limited population of wealthy people who can afford to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said.
Casino operators in highly competitive markets tend to offer rich rewards through player-loyalty programs to incentivize gamblers to stay at their property instead of venturing over to the competition, Bokunewicz said,
“This can lead to increased marketing costs that negatively impacts gross operating profit,” she said. “Casinos located in more isolated locations still offer incentive rewards, but the competition is not as fierce, so the rewards may not be as high as in markets with multiple casinos.”
In addition, patrons able to spend exorbitant amounts of money are “not the type of market that would show up in Danville or the North Carolina casino,” Marino said. Most residents in Southside Virginia and North Carolina would not have that kind of money, he said.
The gaming arrangement in Virginia is much different, with casinos legal in a few localities scattered across the state, he added. Also, casinos in North Carolina are hours away from Danville.
“Based on where Caesars will be located and what I know about the geographic area and the way Virginia has carefully made sure they don’t oversaturate a particular market, it will be fairly successful,” Marino said.
John R. Crane (434) 791-7987


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Danville City Council OKs changes to casino agreement
A slot machine awaits players at the Danville Casino in Schoofield. Industry experts say Caesars Virginia should not be affected by a new casino being built near Charlotte, North Carolina.
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