Running a casino is a tough but immensely profitable business, and the idea of owning a casino to have a stable and bulky income is not that far from the truth! But, like with any business, there are peaks and troughs. As a casino owner, your objective is to earn money, keep gamblers happy, and deal with all of the legal requirements that the government imposes on this type of business. Maintaining these things is difficult, especially because gamblers must lose money in order for you to make money!
To accomplish the goal to make your name in this branch full of shining lights, luxury, and good fun, to maintain a competitive advantage between you and your competition, and on top of that to minimize legal implications, you must handle a variety of not-so-naive challenges! All these obstacles we are going to cover in the next rows.
1. Construction land
Just as with any other type of construction, you need the land. The land location and its surroundings will determine the costs of purchasing the lot. If you are looking for a place in an environment with a lot of competition, you will need to splash a serious amount of money!
2. Building a casino
After you choose the land, you need to book the architect company to design your building, contractors to do the job, and other necessary organizations. Building a complex with your competitors surrounding, the logical conclusion would be to make your casino stand out to attract the most customers. Nowadays, casinos come together with hotels, swimming pools, bars, and restaurants. To build such a complex you will need to cash out between $900 million and $2 billion!
3. Taxes and legal affairs
To run such a business you will have to satisfy all the legal stuff; taxes, permits, and a bunch of other fees regulated by law. How much you need to spare depends on the country you want to start the business.
Every single slot machine and poker table will cost you up to $300 each! You will need to allocate a certain amount of money for games that will be played on every table, as well! Inevitable things such as taxes vary from 3% to 10% on the specific amounts of profit casinos make!
4. Inventory
Slot machines, poker tables, cards, dice, shufflers, chips, and chairs are all indispensable parts of one casino!
A single slot machine requires an investment of between $15.000 and $30.000. The prices vary due to diverse factors such as design, and software. For a nice table, you need to pay between $2.000 and $8.000 depending on its size, material, and quality. Dice, shufflers, card decks, pucks, and other stuff for table games require a couple of hundred dollars each.
Chips range from $5 to $20 depending on their values. For a large casino you need millions of them and to make them even more unique, they need to be customized with the casino’s logo and name. That will require a slightly bigger budget. Here you can add the cases where they are going to be stored. In the end, this will cost you up to $200.
To make your clients more comfortable and therefore make them stay and gamble more, you will need a nice set of chairs which will cost you up to $200 each.
5. Employees
Security guards, dealers, managers, representatives, waiters, cleaning staff, and other employees needed for a casino to live will also cost you! Usually, large casinos employ several thousand people which means their salaries, bonuses, and holidays will cost you up to $10 million every month.
Let’s summarize
Owning a casino is not something that regular people consider on a daily basis. After all, it takes a significant amount of money to invest in and maintain a business. With all of the fees listed above, presuming you truly want to dive into the stormy seas of casinos, we estimate that you will need between $3 billion and $4 billion dollars to make it!
Of course, if the casino is in a smaller city or a more distant region, the price drops substantially.