A bankrupt casino operator plans to permanently close two gambling halls just south of Seattle on November 1, eliminating 238 jobs, the latest in a string of shutdowns blamed on crushing costs and tribal gaming competition.
Maverick Gaming filed Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notices with the state of Washington on Monday for the Great American Casino and the Riverside Casino, both in Tukwila, a suburb immediately south of Seattle. The federal WARN Act requires large employers to give workers at least 60 days' notice before a mass layoff. Riverside Casino will lose 142 employees. Great American Casino will lose 96. The jobs span cashiers, bartenders, dealers, cooks, and management, the full payroll of two properties that will go dark for good.
The closures are not a surprise to anyone tracking Maverick's collapse. The company, which operates roughly two dozen casinos across Washington, Nevada, and Colorado, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last July after a failed 2024 debt restructuring. Its filing listed total liabilities and assets each in the $100 million to $500 million range, a company deep enough in the hole that a court-supervised reorganization was the only path left.
The two Tukwila casinos bring Maverick's closure count to at least seven Washington properties since April. Earlier this year, the company shut down the Dragon Tiger Casino in Mountlake Terrace, the Palace Casino in Lakewood, the Silver Dollar in Renton, and the Roman Casino in Seattle. A fifth location closed in the same stretch but has not been publicly identified. Each closure cost workers their livelihoods and pulled a commercial anchor out of its community.
Maverick has blamed three forces for its troubles: high operational costs, competitive pressure from tribal gaming, and what it calls "surveillance compliance burdens." The company has not detailed what those compliance costs look like in dollar terms, but the phrase points to the layers of state and federal regulation that non-tribal commercial casinos must navigate, security systems, reporting requirements, and monitoring mandates that tribal operations, governed by separate federal compacts, handle under different rules.
Tribal casinos in Washington State have expanded aggressively in recent years, and they operate under a regulatory framework that gives them structural advantages over commercial card rooms. Maverick's filings amount to an admission that it cannot compete on that tilted playing field while also carrying the debt load from its own overexpansion.
When the company entered bankruptcy, it issued a press release that read like a reassurance campaign. Maverick's statement framed the filing as orderly and forward-looking:
"The decision to initiate this court-supervised process follows a strategic review of Maverick's capital structure and operations."
The same release insisted the company's properties would stay open and that customers would notice no change:
"Maverick Gaming's properties remain open and operational, and the company is continuing to deliver the same high-quality gaming and hospitality experience that customers have come to expect."
That pledge has not aged well. Since the bankruptcy filing, Maverick has done the opposite, steadily shrinking its footprint across Washington State, one shuttered casino at a time. The 238 workers now facing layoffs in Tukwila received the same corporate language about "high-quality gaming" that the employees at five already-closed locations heard before their doors locked.
The human cost is straightforward. Two hundred and thirty-eight people, dealers who showed up for swing shifts, bartenders who poured drinks on weekday nights, cooks who kept kitchens running, cashiers who counted chips, will be out of work by November 1. The WARN notice gives them the legally required heads-up, but it does not give them a new job.
Tukwila is a small city. Losing two commercial employers at once hits harder there than it would in downtown Seattle. The Sun reported the full scope of the closures, including the breakdown by property and the range of affected positions.
Several questions remain unanswered. Maverick has not said how many of its roughly two dozen casinos will survive the bankruptcy process. The court overseeing the Chapter 11 case has not been publicly identified in available filings. And the company has offered no timeline for when, or whether, the restructuring will stabilize what remains of its operations.
What is clear is the pattern. A company over-leveraged itself, failed to restructure its debt, entered bankruptcy promising continuity, and then began dismantling its own portfolio, leaving workers, customers, and local tax bases to absorb the fallout.
When the market picks winners and losers, somebody has to live with the result. In this case, it is 238 people in Tukwila who bet on the wrong employer.