Indiana’s regulator urged to allow Horseshoe Casino to remain part of Caesars

Indiana's Horseshoe Hammond Casino could remain a Caesars Entertainment gaming destination well beyond the end of the year, reports The Times of Northwest Indiana.

The Indiana Gaming Commission (IGC) appears poised to reconsider its July 2020 order for Caesars to sell off the Horseshoe, along with two other Hoosier casino properties, as a condition of approving Caesars' merger with Eldorado Resorts.

The newspaper said that IGC officials declined Tuesday to specify the specific nature of the "Horseshoe Hammond Divestiture Order" item listed on the agenda for Thursday's IGC meeting.

However, public records requests submitted to the IGC uncovered recent letters from both Caesars Entertainment CEO Tom Reeg and Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. urging the IGC to reconsider its directive for Caesars to sell the Horseshoe.

Reeg said in his letter the state of Indiana would benefit by leaving Caesars in control of the Hammond casino given the ongoing market shakeup caused by the May 14 opening of the Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana in Gary, along with pending casino projects in nearby Chicago and south suburban Cook County, Illinois.

"Because we believe that Caesars maintaining stewardship over Horseshoe Hammond is in the best interest of the state of Indiana, we are asking the commission to allow us to keep Horseshoe in the Caesars family," Reeg said.

McDermott echoed those sentiments in his letter to the IGC. He described the Horseshoe under Caesars as "a superior product" with "a nationally known and recognizable name" that draws visitors from both Northwest Indiana and across the state line.

McDermott said: "With a Chicago license and a south suburban license location in the process of being finalized in Illinois over the next several months or years at most, now it is even more important to shore up the competitive advantage we have at our gaming location in Hammond, which as you know, sits a mere stone's throw from the Chicago border."

The $17.3 billion Caesars-ElDorado merger created the nation's largest casino company and initially gave "new" Caesars control of 55 casino properties, including five of the 13 gaming facilities in Indiana.

But the IGC unanimously agreed that allowing a single operator to run five Indiana casinos, which together generated nearly 60% of the $590.8 million in gaming taxes paid to the state during the 2019 budget year was an "undue economic concentration" of the gaming industry and ordered Caesars to divest all but two of its Indiana properties within six months.

Caesars decided to sell the Horseshoe, Caesars Southern Indiana in Elizabeth, and the Tropicana Casino in Evansville to new operators while retaining the two suburban Indianapolis horse track casinos, Harrah's Hoosier Park and Indiana Grand.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IGC in November gave Caesars another year to attempt to find a new operator for the Horseshoe, Indiana's highest grossing casino, after Caesars contracted to sell the Tropicana and Caesars Southern prior to the IGC's deadline.

Reeg said in a post-pandemic environment, Caesars' "strong customer and employee relationships" make it "best positioned to ensure it has a sustainable business model for years to come."