Just as it’s doing nationwide, Caesars Entertainment is expanding its reach in Las Vegas with plans to open a sportsbook in the affluent Summerlin area as part of a partnership with the Rampart Casino.
The move, scheduled for 2026 after the Super Bowl and pending approval next month from the Nevada Gaming Commission, will build on the 21 current sportsbooks that operate in Nevada under the Caesars Sportsbook brand name.
Caesars Sportsbook at Rampart Casino will be located on the casino floor in the space occupied by the property’s existing sportsbook, which is currently operated by the casino itself, utilizing the Nevada Sports Books platform, which is linked with the South Point.
The sportsbook will be upgraded with a new video wall and what’s described as a cutting-edge 360-degree LED video display at the sportsbook bar. In addition, 20 Caesars Sportsbook self-service betting kiosks will be available inside the sportsbook and throughout the casino.
“We know there is pent-up demand in the Summerlin community for the quality and depth of our sports betting product and Rampart is the perfect partner to reach the sports fans in this area,” said Eric Hession, president of Caesars Digital.
The scheduled opening at Rampart follows the opening of a William Hill sportsbook in November at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. Currently, there are 23 full-service William Hill sportsbook locations in the Las Vegas valley, including the M Resort in Henderson, the Rio Hotel & Casino, the Venetian and Palazzo on the Strip, the Palms Casino Resort, the Strat, Binion’s, and Four Queens in downtown Las Vegas. The Downtown Grand has a Caesars Sportsbook.
“We generally lead with the William Hill brand in Nevada and most of the partners prefer William Hill. They view Caesars as a competitor or like having a locals-focused brand at their property,” Hession said. “Both brands operate on essentially the same product. It’s really a branding decision on the property where we’re located.”
Currently pending before regulators, Caesars Sportsbooks in northern Nevada owned by Mike Pegram that were run by South Point until August 2024 want to switch from being managed by Caesars to being licensed as the operator. That allows the addition of the Caesars Reward program and taking mobile signups.
Caesars’s most recent sportsbook openings nationwide were Dec. 1 in Missouri at Harrah’s Kansas City and Horseshoe St. Louis. Prior to that, Caesars celebrated the grand opening of Caesars Sportsbook at Monmouth Park on Nov. 20. With its launch in Missouri, Caesars Sportsbook is now live in 34 states and jurisdictions, 29 of which are mobile.
Currently, Caesars offers in-person sports betting on its proprietary tech stack at more than 110 additional locations in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Ontario, Canada, and The Bahamas. The 110-plus include full-service sportsbooks and kiosk-only locations, inclusive of Caesars Sportsbooks at Caesars Rewards destinations and non-Caesars destinations. It doesn’t include risk-managed partnership locations in states like Delaware and Rhode Island.
Some flagship non-destination Caesars Sportsbook locations include the historic Caesars Sportsbook at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., Caesars Sportsbook at Red Mile in Kentucky, and Caesars Sportsbook at Chase Field in Arizona.
Since it acquired William Hill in 2021 for $4 billion, Caesars has fewer William Hill-branded sportsbooks today than the 111 it had back then.
Competition has picked up in the marketplace with the Circa Sportsbook launch and expansion and Boomer’s Sportsbook launching in August with a goal to have 10 properties a year after opening. It has taken over some former William Hill properties and is marketing itself as offering a better price.
At a November Gaming Control Board meeting, Board member George Assad brought up anti-trust issues to Caesars executives and urged them to be careful to ensure a level playing field.
“It’s a competitive market,” said Dan Shapiro, senior vice president and chief development officer at Caesars Digital. “We face competition all the time. It’s not just operators. There are technology providers out there bidding to provide the services to the casinos too. We win some of these and lose some. We’re product-focused, and I think what we pitch is our product-first approach. A lot of casino operators recognize that they want the best product for their customers in their building.”
Hession said when they bought William Hill, they went out with an aggressive price campaign to acquire as many customers as they could and lost a lot of money because their app was ranked 24th in the nation. They realized they had to get out of the business or build a good product.
“We spent the last four years investing in our product, and we have roughly 400 engineers who all they do is code on our app,” Hession said. “We put out a new app roughly every two weeks and each app is better than the other app.”
Today, Hession said Caesars is ranked as the fourth-best app in the country and best app in Nevada.
“What we come to our partners with is we have the best product with the deepest market,” Hession said. “We offer a lot of markets from a pricing standpoint and from a market standpoint that nobody else in Nevada even offers. No one else now is doing live same-day parlay cash outs. It’s an extremely complicated application and our team was able to execute it. Over time, the number of William Hill books is down and our percentage of volume is down, but what you’re seeing is customers react to the product. That’s what they care about. That’s why we invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our product. Customers like it, and when they try it they stick around and are loyal.
“When we go in, make a presentation, and bid on new books, the general managers and owners of the casinos can pull up the apps and see the difference in quality,” Hession said. “Some properties care about that and some don’t. The properties that do, we win, and the others we lose for a variety of reasons. Our volume share is down and the number of books is down. What is up is that we are making more revenue than anybody else because of our product.”
Hession said prices can be cherry picked and some books have better prices than others, depending on the wagers. What they have learned is that over time, customers can be acquired through price, but they don’t stick around.
“That’s what we learned four years ago,” Hession said. “If you have a subpar product, the customers won’t stay. When we do our focus groups, the No. 1 thing customers want is the app to work. They want it to be fast, get the bet down, do parlays and live action. They want to do withdrawals quickly. That is what we focused on. That’s what customers want and what we can deliver better than anyone else.”
With the sports prediction market industry expanding in the U.S., despite states like Nevada and tribes claiming it’s illegal, Hession said they support efforts by the Nevada Gaming Control Board to fight them and appreciate the Board’s guidance that licensees should stay away from the practice in other states where it’s prohibited.
“We’re not going to be launching a prediction market until the legal details are resolved,” Hession said. “That said, based on everything we see right now, it doesn’t appear to be negatively impacting our business, which would lead you to believe most of the volume they’re getting is coming from states where sports betting is not legal. We’re continuing to evaluate it and if there’s an impact, my belief is their product over time will continue to get better and better and that there may ultimately be an impact. But right now, it doesn’t seem to be impacting us that much.”
Since its launch in 2021, the Caesars Sportsbook’s mobile app has continued to enhance its user experience through regular updates, including the launch of its Universal Digital Wallet in June 2025. Now live in 24 jurisdictions, Universal Digital Wallet streamlines the wagering experience for sports bettors who visit Nevada, enabling them to manage funds with seamless access across all Caesars Sportsbook markets, Hession said.
