There is something about the Church that has made Wendover casinos prosperous in the past. I'm not sure what that is, but it is something. Nowadays, as the Church diminishes, Wendover is hurting economically.

Think about it. Most Wendover gamblers are from Utah. From the very beginning, Wendover casinos did whatever they could to get business from Utah. They targeted Mormons, inactive Mormons, exMormons, and nonMormons. The proportion of these groups remained stable for years.

Now, a major shift is going on in Utah, and Wendover is failing to adapt to it successfully.

I feel that in past Utah was so insulated that Wendover seemed like a good deal. Today, Utah is less insulated, so Wendover does not seem like such a good idea anymore. The decline of Mormonism and the internet are responsible for this.

A bad ecomomy is also responsible in part for Wendover's decline, but not for all of it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2014 05:46PM by behindcurtain.

I don't think that is it entirely, I think part of it is that the casinos seem to have pushed their rescources away from the Wasatch Front that was their bread and butter and have tried to entice folks from the mid-west. They have spent a lot of money improving the old Air Force air strip and I don't think that has been the most succesfull. Mesquite also has given them a lot of competition because it is close to St. George which is a popular destination for the Salt Lake crowd and Mesquite is just down the road.

I still know lots of people still heading there for the weekend..So I don't know.

I like going to Wendover. I daytrip out on the bus, listen to the locals talk about their gambling budgets, eat a free buffet, drop the couple of hundred I've been saving on $3 blackjack, watch the other people who have made the trek to this odd desert outpost, look out over the huge expanse of the salt flats, head on home, listening to everyone who seems to meet up every week for the trip.

...that both Wendover and West Wendover experienced marked population declines in the 2000s decade after booming substantially during the 1990s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendover,_Utah

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Wendover,_Nevada

So cleary something is happpening...

It seems more likely that the decline is due to growth in online gambling rather than anything to do with Mormonism.

Also, with all the growth in Vegas, maybe it just can't compete for the out of state gambling dollars.