“ESOPs give the sponsoring company, the selling shareholder, and participants receive various tax benefits, making them qualified plans.”įounded in 1997 by the Lee family, Eureka was sold to the employees in 2015 with an ESOP set up in 2016. “An employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is an employee benefit plan that gives workers ownership interest in the company,” according to Investopedia. Interestingly, the Eureka Casino is also the only employee-owned gaming company in the United States.

However, the difficulty in airlines meeting demand for Las Vegas does have a ripple effect on Eureka, as many customers fly into McCarran and rent a car or RV to drive to Utah and the Rockies.Ĭarrier claims the Eureka is frequently at 90% occupancy, although at 200 rooms that is a trick a lot easier to pull off than at the 5,044 room MGM Grand or the Luxor, with 4,400. While Las Vegas traffic is certainly returning, the 3,521,210-passenger count in May 2021 is still down almost 25% from May 2019, when 4,584,506 went through McCarran. The Mesquite market is not as dependent on “lift”, or air traffic, as is Las Vegas. People picked off-peak times to come in when they perceived there were fewer people.” While alcohol sales were down, coffee sales perked up. During the shutdown, Eureka set up a drive through food pantry for the town, bought testing kits and ultimately ran a vaccination center for the city of Mesquite.Īt the casino, Carrier adds, “We never did more business between 5AM and 10AM.

When they re-opened in June, he says Eureka followed ‘best practices,’ with four seats per gaming table and plexiglass separating employees and customers. Still, “We all went to zero together,” says Carrier, as all of Nevada’s casinos were shut down in March 2020. “The drive markets did better, and we’re still doing better, as we don’t have the reliance on convention traffic.” Carrier says the Eureka was not hit as hard as Las Vegas during the pandemic.

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