Tunica Had Ten Casinos in 2007. Sam's Town Closed in November 2025. Five Are Left, and One Still Has a Poker Room.

The Mississippi Gaming Commission's September 2026 survey counts 4,626 slot machines and 2,760 hotel rooms in the Tunica region. In the last quarter of 2007 it counted 13,716 and 5,894. What the drop means for the five casinos still open, and for anyone deciding between Tunica and West Memphis.

Published 2026-11-02.

Boyd Gaming's annual report for 2025 disposes of 31 years in one sentence: on November 9, 2025, the company permanently closed Sam's Town Tunica. The barge-based casino that opened in May 1994 had 534 slot machines and seven table games left at the end, and the Mississippi Gaming Commission's November 2025 property survey lists it with a one-line epitaph, "closed, no other amenities."

That leaves five casinos in Tunica County. In the last quarter of 2007 the commission's survey of the same region counted ten, with 13,716 slots, 395 tables, 74 poker tables and 5,894 hotel rooms. In September 2026 it counted six casinos including the Isle of Capri in Lula, one county south, with 4,626 slots, 149 tables, 24 poker tables and 2,760 rooms. Every one of those 24 poker tables is at one casino.

In 60 seconds

If you hold a Caesars Rewards card or want live poker, Horseshoe is the reason to come; it has the region's only poker room. Gold Strike has the tallest hotel and the most rooms, and it has not been an MGM casino since February 2023. Hollywood and 1st Jackpot share a PENN Play card; Fitz is the independent with 500 rooms. For a Memphis evening rather than a Mississippi weekend, Southland in West Memphis is 8 miles from Beale Street and Tunica is 30. Rooms here are cheap because demand fell, which is a fair trade if you know it going in.

01

How ten became five

Tunica County's first casino, Splash, opened in 1992, two years after Mississippi's special-session law allowed dockside casinos in counties on the river and the Gulf. The state code still reads that way: gambling is legal on a vessel on the Mississippi River or navigable waters in a county that borders it, and on shore structures within 800 feet of the water only in the three Gulf Coast counties. That is why Tunica's casinos are legally boats and the Biloxi casinos we cover in our Gulf Coast guide are buildings on land.

By January 2007 the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis was describing Tunica as the fifth-largest casino market in the country, with more than 6,300 hotel rooms and about 15,000 casino workers in a county that had been one of the poorest in America. Then the closures came in a steady line. Harrah's Tunica, the former Grand Casino with 1,356 rooms, closed on June 2, 2014 and was demolished the next summer. Tunica Roadhouse shut its casino in January 2019 and its hotel in January 2020. Resorts Tunica closed on June 30, 2019. Sam's Town followed in November 2025. The commission's survey shows regional hotel inventory falling from 3,095 rooms in November 2025 to 2,760 in September 2026, which is the Sam's Town rooms coming off the books.

Revenue tells the same story without the drama. The commission's Northern region, which is Tunica plus Lula, won $631 million in 2016, $583 million in 2019, $696 million in the stimulus year of 2021 and $522 million in 2025. Through September 2026 it was at $366 million, about 7 percent below the same nine months of 2025. Hotel occupancy in September 2026 was 50.5 percent at an average rate of $86.51; on the Coast the same month it was 82 percent at $101.

Those are not the numbers of a market that is coming back.

02

Who took the money

The commission publishes where its patrons come from, and the Tunica numbers show the Arkansas share collapsing. In the last quarter of 2007, 28.6 percent of the region's patrons gave Tennessee addresses, 16.2 percent Mississippi and 16.2 percent Arkansas. In September 2026 Tennessee was 36.7 percent, Mississippi 36.3 percent and Arkansas 7.5 percent. Arkansas did not stop gambling. It opened its own casinos.

Arkansas voters passed Amendment 100 in 2018, and Southland in West Memphis, a greyhound track Delaware North has owned since the 1970s, became a full casino on April 1, 2019. Its website now lists a 300-room high-rise hotel, 2,300 slots plus 54 in a high-limit room, 50 live tables and a sportsbook, and the state's casino tax receipts went from $740,000 in the fiscal year ending 2019 to $116.9 million in the year ending June 2026. Saracen in Pine Bluff opened in 2020 with 80,000 square feet, a poker room and, in 2026, a 320-room hotel taking bookings, and its BetSaracen app takes bets from anywhere in Arkansas.

Beale Street to Southland is 8 road miles. Beale Street to Gold Strike is 30. A Memphian with a free Tuesday night no longer has a reason to cross the state line south, and the Tennessee share of Tunica's business is now its loyalists and its weekenders. We think this is the single most important fact about Tunica in 2026, and it is the one the casinos' own marketing never mentions.

03

The five, honestly

Horseshoe Tunica is the Caesars property, with the real estate owned by VICI since 2017. The commission's September 2026 survey gives it 848 slots, 59 tables, the 24-table poker room, 505 hotel rooms, a spa, a pool and a sportsbook with kiosks that work with Caesars Rewards. It also lists 858 employees, which for a casino this size tells you it still runs a full service operation. If the point of the trip is poker, this is the trip. The World Series of Poker's 2026-27 Circuit schedule has no Mississippi stop, so the tournament calendar that used to anchor Tunica is gone; the cash games are not. Gold Strike is the one most people have wrong. MGM Resorts sold its operations to Cherokee Nation Entertainment, a subsidiary of Cherokee Nation Businesses, for $450 million in a deal that closed on February 15, 2023, and the Oklahoma tribe's enterprise has run it since. The card is now Status+ Rewards, not MGM Rewards, and the sportsbook is DraftKings-branded with 10 kiosks and four counters. The casino's own pages describe nearly 1,200 machines, more than 50 tables and 50,000 square feet, with a new high-limit room and rebranded restaurants; the commission counts 1,078 slots, 57 tables and 1,109 hotel rooms in the 31-story tower. No poker. If you want a tall, well-kept hotel on the strip and do not care whose card is in your pocket, this is it. Hollywood Casino Tunica is PENN's, with 494 rooms in two towers, an RV park and sportsbook kiosks open around the clock. The commission counts 756 slots and six tables, which is the thinnest table pit on the strip. 1st Jackpot, also PENN, is the former Bally's Tunica, renamed in 2017 after its hotel was demolished; it has 644 slots, seven tables, a sportsbook and no rooms. The two share PENN Play points, so for a PENN member they function as one casino with a hotel at one end. Fitz Casino & Hotel is the independent, with more than 500 rooms on nine floors, 827 slots, 15 tables, sportsbook kiosks on both floors and a loyalty program called MYEDGE. Its website does not name its owner, and we are not going to guess.
CasinoSlots (MGC, Sept 2026)TablesPokerHotel roomsCard
Horseshoe8485924 tables505Caesars Rewards
Gold Strike1,07857none1,109Status+ Rewards
Hollywood7566none494PENN Play
1st Jackpot6447nonenonePENN Play
Fitz82715none506MYEDGE
04

Where the usual advice is wrong

The usual advice is that Tunica is Memphis's casino district, the way Atlantic City is Philadelphia's. It stopped being true on April 1, 2019, and the patron numbers above are the proof.

For a visitor to Memphis with one evening, Southland is the answer, and it has a hotel and a Delaware North loyalty program that ties into the company's other casinos, including Two Kings in North Carolina. For a visitor with a weekend, a poker habit or a Caesars card, Tunica still wins, and it wins on price: a region running 50 percent occupancy at an $86 average rate is a region where a weekday room is easy to get, and a comped one easier still. Our comps explainer covers why reinvestment rates rise when a market shrinks.

The other piece of folklore is that you can bet on your phone once you are in Mississippi. You cannot, unless you are standing on casino property. The commission's own FAQ says mobile sports wagering is illegal, the legislature has killed statewide mobile bills every year since 2024, and in 2026 the Mobile Sports Wagering Act passed the House on February 25 and died in a Senate committee on March 17. All six casinos in the region take sports bets at kiosks or counters, and the Northern region's handle in September 2026 was $3.6 million, down 14 percent on the year.

05

Getting there and what is not there

Memphis International Airport to Gold Strike is about 29 road miles, 44 minutes without traffic, down US-61 through the Delta; Fitz is another two miles on. The casino strip is in Tunica Resorts, formerly Robinsonville, not in the town of Tunica itself, which is further south. We looked for an airport shuttle on the casinos' and the visitors bureau's pages and found none, so plan on driving or a rideshare.

The Tunica RiverPark and the Tunica Arena & Exposition Center, the county's two public attractions from the boom years, still appear in the visitors bureau's listings, but the RiverPark's own website had lapsed to a hosting placeholder when we checked and the arena's was unreachable; the bureau's November 2026 events calendar is entirely casino shows. Do not plan a day around either without calling.

The last thing to know is where the casinos stand on the map. The commission's data is for a region, and that region includes the Isle of Capri in Lula, down the river in Coahoma County, which is a different trip. Our Tunica casinos page and casinos near Memphis have the current list and distances. If gambling has stopped being something you decide the cost of in advance, 1-800-GAMBLER is free and confidential.

What was checked, and when. Slot, table, poker and room counts are the Mississippi Gaming Commission's property survey for September 2026, cross-checked against each casino's own site on November 2, 2026; the 2007 figures are the commission's fourth-quarter 2007 survey. Revenue is the commission's adjusted gross gaming revenue history for the Northern region, which includes Lula, and its September 2026 monthly report. The Sam's Town closure is from Boyd Gaming's 10-K filed February 2026; the Gold Strike sale is from MGM's 10-K for 2023. Arkansas figures are from the state Department of Finance and Administration and Southland's own site. Bill histories are from the Mississippi Legislature's status pages. Distances are OpenStreetMap routing, not Google Maps. We could not confirm Fitz's ownership or any Memphis shuttle, so neither is stated.

Last updated November 2, 2026

Topics

  • tunica
  • mississippi
  • memphis
  • horseshoe
  • gold-strike

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