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PENN Entertainment will spend approximately $195 million to replace its riverboat casino in the New Orleans area with a landside property, rebranding Boomtown Casino & Hotel New Orleans as Hollywood Casino New Orleans once the new building opens in 2029. The plan, announced August 17, still needs sign-off from the Louisiana Gaming Control Board and the Jefferson Parish Council before construction can start.
The new facility will sit on land adjacent to the current riverboat in Jefferson Parish, running roughly 140,000 to 145,000 square feet with about 875 slot machines, 45 table games, a retail sportsbook, dining venues, bars and a VIP lounge. The existing Boomtown riverboat carries more than 700 slots, a poker room and over 20 table games, and it stays open through the transition. The 150-room hotel on site keeps running throughout.
Boomtown's gaming revenue came in around $104.6 million for fiscal 2026, down from $130 million to $140 million before the pandemic. A landside building removes the operational limits of a riverboat, fixed berth capacity, gangway access, vessel maintenance, and gives PENN more room to redesign the floor around what actually drives spend today rather than what a boat's hull allowed twenty years ago.
CEO Jay Snowden called it "a disciplined approach to capital allocation, prioritizing organic growth opportunities that build on our operational strengths and are expected to deliver compelling returns." He pointed to it as PENN's fourth landside relocation in recent years, following Hollywood Casino Aurora and a sister project in Joliet, Illinois, plus a planned Hollywood Casino Council Bluffs in Iowa due in 2028. Kathryn Jenkins, PENN's vice president and general manager in Louisiana, said the company is "proud to make this significant investment in Jefferson Parish."
PENN plans to fund the project from cash reserves, with balance-sheet liquidity as a backstop. The company already runs four other casinos in Louisiana, employs more than 3,500 people in the state and says it contributes over $200 million a year in state and local tax revenue there.
The move follows a pattern other operators are running in parallel. Ilitch Gaming completing full ownership of Atlantic City's Ocean Casino Resort and Bally's pausing construction on its Chicago casino show land-based operators making very different capital bets on the same underlying question: where to put money into a physical gaming floor right now. PENN's answer in Aurora was a landside rebuild that lifted revenue well above the riverboat it replaced. New Orleans is the same bet, made a third time.
The riverboat era is ending property by property, not all at once
Louisiana never forced its casinos off the water the way some states did decades ago. PENN is doing it voluntarily, one property at a time, funded by cash rather than a legislative mandate. Aurora already showed the math works. New Orleans is the next test of whether it scales, and the regulator and parish council now decide how fast.
Related: Hollywood Casino Aurora's Land-Based Revenue Jump | Ilitch Gaming Takes Full Ownership of Ocean Casino Resort | Bally's Pauses Construction on Its Chicago Casino