Bally's Corp Buys Las Vegas Strip Casino For $150 MillionRhode Island-Based Gaming Company Purchases Tropicana Las Vegas From Leisure & Gaming |
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Bally’s Corp. announced Tuesday that it was purchasing its first casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The Rhode Island-based gaming company will buy the Tropicana Las Vegas Hotel and Casino for about $150 million from Gaming & Leisure.
Bally’s is only buying the operations side of the business and will not own the real estate outright. Gaming & Leisure will continue to own the underlying assets and collect $10.5 million in annual rent from the up-and-coming gaming company.
In conjunction with its Las Vegas move, Bally’s will sell its properties in Black Hawk, Colorado and Rock Island, Illinois. The properties are being sold to Gaming & Leisure for $150 million and the day-to-day operations of those casinos will still be run by Bally’s. It will pay $12 million in rent annually for those two casinos.
Bally’s is taking a play right out of the MGM Resorts playbook. In late 2019 and early 2020, MGM sold Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand and Bellagio to the Blackstone Group and MGM Growth Properties in the same type of sale-and-leaseback deal Bally’s made. At the time, MGM called it part of its “asset-light strategy.”
Before last October, Bally’s Corp. was known as Twin River Worldwide Holdings. The company got it start in Rhode Island, where it owns the state’s only two casinos, but it quickly expanded and now owns casino properties in eight states. It purchased the Bally’s brand from Caesars Entertainment for $20 million. Bally’s Las Vegas, however, is still owned by Caesars.
Tropicana becomes Bally’s first Las Vegas property and second one in Nevada after it purchased the MontBleu Resort from Caesars earlier this month.
“Landing a preeminent spot on the Las Vegas Strip is a key step for us,” said Bally’s president and CEO George Papenier in a statement.
According to a report from Yahoo, the deal for Tropicana Las Vegas will be finalized in early 2022. Penn National Gaming bought Tropicana in 2015 for $360 million, but sold the land to its spin-off company, Gaming & Leisure for $337.5 million in rent credits.
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