Top 10 Las Vegas Casinos Closing Down This Year — This Is Getting Ugly
Las Vegas Is Shrinking: Why Casino Closures Signal a Deeper Crisis on the Strip
Las Vegas still sparkles from afar, but up close, the city is quietly undergoing one of the most dramatic transformations in its modern history. Behind the neon lights and massive LED billboards, tourism is slowing, prices are surging, and some of the most iconic casino properties ever built are disappearing. This isn’t just a bad year for Vegas—it’s a turning point.
During the summer of 2025, Las Vegas tourism has fallen sharply, costing the city billions in lost revenue. Inflation has turned once-affordable indulgences into luxury items. Hotel rooms that used to cost $120 a night now regularly exceed $300. A simple coffee can run $9. Visitors are cutting trips short—or skipping Vegas altogether. And while fewer tourists are part of the problem, the real crisis runs deeper than foot traffic.
What’s happening on the Strip is not just about failing casinos. It’s about land, consolidation, and a business model that no longer values history, community, or affordability.
When Land Becomes More Valuable Than the Business
One of the clearest signs of trouble is that casinos are closing not because they’re losing money, but because the land underneath them is worth more empty than occupied. That reality alone marks a radical shift in how Las Vegas operates.
Take smaller local casinos first. Properties like the Clarion Hotel and Casino survived for decades by serving locals—retirees playing low-stakes poker, regulars who knew the dealers by name, and employees who worked there their entire adult lives. Yet after years of legal disputes and loan defaults, the Clarion is shutting down permanently in 2025. Not for reinvention. Not for renovation. Just closure. Three hundred workers lose their jobs, and a community hub quietly disappears.
This pattern escalates dramatically as you move up the Strip.
The End of Iconic Resorts
Few closures hit harder than the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. For nearly 30 years, the Rio was a cultural landmark—home to legendary performers, massive buffets, and the World Series of Poker for over a decade. But after its sale to a real estate investment firm, the message became clear: the Rio’s future wasn’t hospitality. Its land value now outweighs its casino revenue.
With the lease ending in 2025, nearly 1,800 employees face job uncertainty. These are not temporary workers; they are dealers, housekeepers, and servers who built their lives around the property. The potential demolition of the Rio isn’t just a closure—it’s the collapse of a workforce ecosystem.
Even newer properties aren’t safe. Virgin Hotels Las Vegas opened in 2021 with a bold, rebellious brand and $200 million in upgrades. Yet within three years, it struggled to define its audience. Too edgy for families, too corporate for counterculture, too expensive for locals, and too far off-strip for convenience. Now it faces another rebrand or sale—proof that novelty alone no longer guarantees survival.
Failure Before the First Guest Arrives
Perhaps the most haunting symbol of Vegas excess is a towering glass structure that never welcomed a single guest. Known most recently as The Drew, this development began before the 2008 recession and became a 15-year saga of unfinished ambition. Billions of dollars were poured into it across multiple ownership changes. Opening dates came and went. Construction jobs came and went. The building never opened.
In a city built on spectacle, The Drew stands as a monument to overconfidence—a reminder that bigger is not always better, and growth is not infinite.
The Death of Affordable Vegas
While some closures dominate headlines, others reveal a quieter but more damaging shift: the deliberate removal of middle-class access to the Strip.
One of the most striking examples is the conversion of the LINQ Hotel into a full-time timeshare property. The LINQ wasn’t flashy, but it was accessible. It offered a modern stay in a prime location without luxury pricing. Its transition to timeshares makes financial sense for corporate owners—selling the same room to dozens of owners generates more profit with fewer staff—but it permanently removes another affordable option from Las Vegas.
This trend culminates in the closure of Circus Circus, a 60-year-old family-friendly resort that once defined budget travel on the Strip. Carnival games, trapeze acts, and low room rates made it a rare place where families could afford to experience Vegas together. Renovating it would have cost hundreds of millions. The decision was simple: shut it down.
With its closure, Las Vegas effectively signals that working-class families are no longer part of its target audience.
Erasing History for Profit
The most controversial closures aren’t about failure at all—they’re about replacement. The Tropicana, a property that survived mob control, federal raids, and nearly seven decades of change, is being demolished despite remaining profitable. Its replacement? A publicly funded baseball stadium for a relocating team.
This decision encapsulates everything unsettling about modern Las Vegas. A functioning casino employing over a thousand people is torn down not because it failed, but because a different project promises faster returns. The stadium will sit empty most of the year. The casino operated daily. Yet the math favors demolition.
The same logic applies to the Mirage, one of the most influential resorts in Vegas history. It is being erased to make way for a branded guitar-shaped tower. The Mirage still works. It still draws crowds. But preservation doesn’t matter when rebranding offers greater control and perceived growth.
A City Optimized Into Something Unrecognizable
Even luxury resorts are admitting reality. The Venetian and Palazzo are permanently closing over 1,000 hotel rooms—not for renovation, but because maintaining them costs more than they earn. For the first time, Vegas is shrinking intentionally. The era of endless expansion is over.
What remains is a city being optimized for maximum return: fewer rooms, higher prices, less labor, and more exclusive access. Middle-class tourists are being priced out. Employees are being displaced. History is being bulldozed.
Las Vegas isn’t dying—but the Vegas people remember is.
The Strip is no longer built for everyone. It’s built for spreadsheets, investors, and short-term gains. And somewhere, right now, another beloved property is being evaluated—not for its legacy, but for whether it’s worth more alive or demolished.
Increasingly, the answer is demolition.
If there’s a Vegas resort you love, don’t assume it will always be there. In today’s Las Vegas, survival has nothing to do with loyalty, history, or even profitability. It’s about land value—and land is winning.
