Horseshoe Brand Coming to St. Louis in Lumière Place Refresh

Posted on: February 7, 2022, 10:16h. 

Last updated on: February 7, 2022, 12:32h.

Todd Shriber @etfgodfather Read More
Expertise: Financial, Gaming Business, Mergers and Acquisitions.

Caesars Entertainment is bringing the famed Horseshoe brand to St. Louis as it’s renaming and refurbishing Lumière Place Casino and Hotel.

Horseshoe
Caesars’ Horseshoe Casino in Baltimore, seen above. The company is bringing that brand to St. Louis in a rename of Lumière Place Casino. (Image: Baltimore Sun)

The Horseshoe brand carries some weight in the casino industry. It has history, too, with the original Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas having opened in the early 1950s.

The transformation into the legendary Horseshoe will include a renovated exterior with Horseshoe signage, a new look for the casino floor, including updated carpeting and lighting, new slot options, and a brand-new Starbucks coming later in the year,” according to a statement issued by Caesars.

Lumière Place is one of three venues the operator runs in Missouri, with the other two being Harrah’s North in Kansas City and Isle of Capri in Boonvile. Lumière Place and Isle of Capri joined the Caesars portfolio when Eldorado Resorts acquired the Las Vegas-based gaming company for $17.3 billion in 2020. That created the largest casino and entertainment company in the US.

Caesars Reviving Horseshoe Brand

Currently, Caesars operates five venues under that brand — one apiece in Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, and Mississippi.

That number is slated to go to seven because of the renaming of the aforementioned St. Louis venue and Caesars’ plans to bring the Horseshoe name back to the Las Vegas Strip. It will be applied to the casino-resort currently-known as Bally’s.

Starting this year, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) will move to Horseshoe on the Strip from the Rio. The soon-to-be Horseshoe in St. Louis is getting in on the poker act too, with a dedicated WSOP room with 10 tables of its own. In the statement, Caesars said “Tournaments are expected to return in the near future” to the Missouri venue.

The name change and property enhancements are expected to be completed in spring 2022. Caesars didn’t disclose costs for the project.

Horseshoe History

As noted above, the Horseshoe brand is into its eighth decade of existence. It’s proven venerable through a series of gaming industry mergers and acquisitions.

Harrah’s Entertainment acquired the Horseshoe gaming brand in 2004 as part of a $5.2 billion acquisition of Caesars and Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas.

In 2008, several private equity companies, including Apollo Global Management, acquired Harrah’s Entertainment for $17.1 billion in cash and $10.7 billion in debt. That entity would later take the Caesars name in 2010.

Suffocating under a massive debt burden, Caesars Entertainment Operating Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2015. In 2019, Carl Icahn, who at the time was Caesars’ largest shareholder, installed Anthony Rodio as chief executive officer and pushed the casino giant to explore a sale. That culminated in the aforementioned deal with Eldorado Resorts, which was announced in June 2019.

Through all that, the Horseshoe brand survived.