Horseshoe on the Strip
Nearly eleven months after the original announcement, Bally’s Las Vegas has been officially renamed to Horseshoe Las Vegas. The transformation is not 100% complete, as some Bally’s logos and signage still remain, but it will all be changed soon enough.
There were a couple of reasons for the name change. First, Caesars Entertainment, which owns the property, does not actually own the Bally’s brand anymore. In October 2020, Twin River Worldwide Holdings acquired the Bally’s brand from Caesars for $20 million and eventually renamed its company to Bally’s. As part of the deal, Twin River allowed Caesars to keep the Bally’s name on its casino in Las Vegas, but considering the brand now belonged to Twin River and Twin River was eventually going to rebrand most of its casinos to the Bally’s name, Caesars wasn’t going to want to keep the name forever.
The other reason for the metamorphosis was to bring a historic Caesars and poker name to the Las Vegas Strip. Binion’s Horseshoe was one of the legendary casinos in downtown Las Vegas. Caesars (then Harrah’s) acquired the casino in 2004, kept the Horseshoe brand, and sold the property to MTR Gaming Group. A year later, MTR renamed it Binion’s Gambling Hall, erasing the Horseshoe name from Las Vegas.
WSOP, Horseshoe reunited
Not only was Binion’s Horseshoe a mainstay for decades, it was also the home of the World Series of Poker from 1970 to 2004. With the transition from Harrah’s to MTR and the growth of the WSOP, the Series was moved to the Rio in 2005, with the final three tables of the Main Event still taking place at Binion’s one last time.
When Caesars sold the Rio in 2019, the writing was on the wall for the WSOP at its second home. There had been rumors for years that it might move to swankier digs, but now that Caesars didn’t own the property anymore, it was essentially a given that the Series would eventually move.
And so it did this year, splitting tables between Paris and Bally’s (now Horseshoe, of course), the first time the World Series of Poker has been on the Las Vegas Strip. By all accounts, even though players had to get accustomed to new locations and procedures, everything operated very well this summer. And now, with the rebranding, the WSOP and Horseshoe have been reunited.
“At Horseshoe, it’s all about the gambler,” said Jason Gregorec, senior vice president and general manager of the Horseshoe early this year. “Since 1951, Horseshoe Casinos have been home to the best odds, highest limits, and biggest jackpots. So, it’s fitting that we bring Horseshoe back to Las Vegas, and right on the Las Vegas Strip.”
Image credit: Guillermo Moreno via Flickr