Michigan will soon see a new iGaming brand: Horseshoe Online Casino. It will replace WynnBet Casino, which operates in partnership with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. Early indications are that customers can expect the brand to appear in September this year.
Wynn Resorts abandoned its Michigan online casino in February, selling the assets and license to Caesars, which already operates Caesars Palace Online Casino in the state. For the first six months following the transaction, Caesars has continued to serve the site’s customers under the WynnBet brand, but with the understanding that it would eventually change the name to match one of its own brands.
Yesterday, for the first time, Caesars revealed which brand that would be. During the company’s Q2 earnings call, CFO Eric Hession told investors that WynnBet would become Horseshoe—and soon.
We successfully completed the acquisition of WynnBet’s operations in Michigan in June, which sets the stage for the introduction of our new iGaming app, which will be branded the Horseshoe in early Q3.
There’s no specific date for the relaunch. However, Hession may have misspoken when he said, “early Q3.”
Later on the call, he said that September was the expected timeframe for Horseshoe Michigan. He went on to say that other states would follow one by one through the rest of 2024, while Horseshoe Ontario will come in Q1 2025.
- Caesars Palace Online Casino Review
- WynnBet Casino Review
The Horseshoe—an Old Name in Casino Gaming
The Horseshoe is a brand that will resonate with most casino patrons. The name alone conjures images of the Old West and the earliest days of Las Vegas gambling.
Today, Caesars operates 10 retail casinos under the Horseshoe brand. However, none of them is the original Horseshoe.
That Fremont Street property, known as Binion’s Horseshoe from 1951 to 2004, now goes by Binion’s Gambling Hall and Hotel. One of its claims to fame was as the original venue for the World Series of Poker, another brand now owned by Caesars.
There is still a Horseshoe Las Vegas, but it has only used that name since 2022. Before that, it was Bally’s Las Vegas.
The other nine Caesars-operated casinos currently called The Horseshoe are in:
- Baltimore, MD
- Hammond, IL
- Bossier City, LA
- Council Bluffs, IA
- Tunica, MS
- Indianapolis, IN
- Lake Charles, LA
- St. Louis, MO
- Black Hawk, CO
Horseshoe Will Play Second Fiddle to Caesars Palace
Caesars CEO Tom Reeg also spoke to investors about the new brand. From the sounds of it, Horseshoe will be a pure-play online casino product like Caesars Palace rather than a hybrid product like Caesars Sportsbook & Casino.
Reeg spoke favorably of the performance of Caesars Palace and said he expects Horseshoe to add to that:
Expect that the Horseshoe brand, the second brand in iCasino can help us build on the gains that we’ve had since we rolled out Caesars Palace online. So, momentum in digital is quite strong for us and all of the targets that we’ve laid out in the past still seem well within our grasp.
Later, however, Hession cautioned investors to temper their expectations for the brand somewhat. Caesars has seen iGaming growing faster than online sports betting, and the standalone Caesars Palace brand is increasing its share of total online casino revenue. However, Hession said that the Caesars Palace brand would remain the number one focus, while Horseshoe’s contribution to revenue would be “incremental.”
In Q2, Caesars Palace held about 6% of the Michigan market, while WynnBet held 1.3%. It remains to be seen whether the rebranding moves the needle for the latter.
The long-term value of the Horseshoe brand in iGaming may only become apparent if and when online casinos become legal in one of the nine states where Caesars operates it as a retail brand.
It’s instructive to consider BetMGM‘s brands in New Jersey as a point of comparison. Its core brand holds about 12% of that market, while its secondary brand, Borgata Online Casino, isn’t far behind at 9.4%. That’s probably because the Borgata is such an iconic part of the Atlantic City landscape. Conversely, the specialty Wheel of Fortune Casino has only managed about 0.3%, and the BetMGM hasn’t seen fit to expand it to other states.
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