Texas-Size Those Casinos!

The prospects for widespread casino-style gaming in Texas, with massive Vegas-style resort casinos, drew huge crowds to a state House hearing yesterday. Proposals are now on the table to transform the landscape by allowing racinos (casinos at horse and dog race tracks), destination resorts, and on American Indian lands.

How big might this be? When Sheldon Adelson, chair and CEO of Las Vegas Sands (the legend whose company who brought the Venetian and Palazzo to Vegas and Macao), shows up to testify, you’re talking big: Texas-size, that is.

Members of the Tigua Tribe of El Paso and the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Livingston also testified before the Texas House about the rationale for reopening the tribes’ casinos, which were closed by federal authorities in 2002 after the state sued. The tribes have been in casino limbo ever since.

Stay tuned on this one – a potentially game-changing move in Texas that could tap into one of the few remaining untapped markets – and one which undoubtedly will raise the ire of anti-gambling activists in the Bible Belt.