Affinity Gaming will leave the Primm market by July 4, 2026. This includes Primm Valley Resort, the last casino and hotel in the area, two gas stations, the Flying J truck stop, the California Lottery store, a Subway, and a fast food taco restaurant. The town’s only apartment complex will also close, eliminating Primm’s entire population.
Buffalo Bill’s closed in July 2025. It has reopened for occasional concerts since then. Whiskey Pete’s closed in December 2024.
This comes after Terrible’s in Jean, once known as Goldstrike, permanently closed in March 2020. The company originally planned to reopen the casino and hotel after the pandemic closure. Unfortunately, a major storm caused severe damage to the property. It was mostly demolished to make room for a warehouse complex that was never built. Nevada Landing closed in Jean in 2008 to make room for a planned community that never materialized. This means there will be no casinos between M Resort and the California state line once Primm closes.
What caused Primm to die?
Primm thrived when it offered value, novelty, and convenience relative to California. Once it lost those advantages, there was little reason for Californians to stop, or for Las Vegans to take a staycation there. When the reasons players spent hours and entire weekends disappeared, Primm became a pitstop, not a destination.
As business conditions eroded, it seemed like nobody in Primm cared to try new concepts to draw players. One could argue they did the opposite by lowering payouts and increasing minimum table game bets. By the end, Primm did not even have live tables after a disastrous hybrid game experiment that dealers said ran off the remaining pit players and hurt tips.
Massive marketing errors were made
Primm offered great free slot play based on action. Player retention was not the problem. It was player acquisition.
Primm is on Interstate 15 about 40 miles south of Las Vegas on the California border. Convincing drive-by traffic to stop was critical. Primm’s website always had errors, including which hotels and food options were open. Casino pages often showed misinformation, like claims of offering certain games that did not exist or leading players to the wrong casino for live tables.
The website is full of inaccurate information
One example is still on the table game section of Primm’s website. The electronic table game claims are inaccurate. Also, the hours for the pit that closed years ago remain on a page that now covers electronic tables.
When Buffalo Bill’s closed and hotel operations moved to Primm Valley, guests could not book a room online after July 6, 2025, until we broke the closure story and included this information. When the amusement park operated, hours on the website often contradicted reality, especially near the end of its run.
Panda Express closed at Buffalo Bill’s in 2023, yet it still shows as open on Primm’s website. Pony Express Pizza and Denny’s also show as open. Both closed last year. Pages also still exist and show as open for the closed Whiskey Pete’s IHOP and Qdoba locations. While not linked in Primm’s dining section, the pages are in the sitemap and appear in Google as Primm dining options.
When potential customers cannot rely on the website for accurate information, they either do not stop or may never return.
Another big marketing fail was not leveraging Terrible’s demise in Jean. Primm’s mailing address is technically Jean, as that is where the post office is. Vegas Advantage still gets traffic from people looking for the shuttered Jean casino. Primm could have pitched those people to stay and play there, but never got the chance, because they never made any attempt to optimize their website for Jean casino searches. This was one of many suggestions we made in 2023.
Primm management seemed very shy. It was nearly impossible to reach anyone for information or interviews. They left free advertising and control of their own narrative on the table.
The visitation decline started in the early 2000s
Primm’s biggest problem was the opening of tribal casinos in Southern California more than 25 years ago. As those properties opened and expanded to become more like Las Vegas resorts, fewer tour buses delivered players to Primm. Fewer gamblers made the highway drive to Las Vegas.
Primm mostly held on as its resorts were still modern and had draws like major concerts, amusement rides, and games that are illegal in California, like craps and roulette.
The Great Recession was the next problem
Herbst Gaming acquired Primm from what is now MGM Resorts in 2007. That was just in time to own it during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Herbst Gaming fell into bankruptcy in 2010. Affinity Gaming bought its Primm assets. Around that same time, Primm acquired the fixtures from the failed Fontainebleau project and used them to remodel hotel rooms.
The first decline in gambling quality started around the change to new ownership
The new Primm owners quickly downgraded games. It started with video poker at Whiskey Pete’s. As VPFree2 noted in 2012, “Still no playable VP” (video poker). The full-pay machines were removed from Whiskey Pete’s a year or two before.
Buffalo Bill’s saw similar downgrades around that time. This included the removal of full-pay Jacks or Better. Primm Valley Resort also saw a video poker decline. Slot points were downgraded for video poker players as paytables dropped.
Table games also deteriorated
Vegas Advantage’s earliest Primm surveys around 2015 showed 3:2 blackjack at all three Primm casinos. By 2018, all blackjack paid 6:5, except one $25 3:2 table at Primm Valley Resort. Table game minimums also increased through the 2010s, when Las Vegas mostly remained the same. The Primm game rules and minimums were more like the Strip than the more competitive Las Vegas locals and downtown markets. It seemed like Primm never realized it was competing with South Point.
Investment in Primm mostly stopped after that
While some Fontainebleau furnishings remained for future remodels, that was the end of major investment in the property. Room quality fell throughout the 2010s. Travel sites are covered in one-star reviews of Primm hotels due to cleanliness and maintenance issues. Restaurants also have many negative reviews.
Major amenities declined in condition or disappeared. Buffalo Bill’s poker room closed in 2013, according to Las Vegas poker expert Rob Solomon. The trams between casinos stopped running around 2015. The amusement park’s hours became inconsistent in 2018. The drop tower was removed and sold to an Iowa amusement park. The log flume’s extra features, which included a shooting gallery along the ride, broke and were never repaired.
The pandemic was the beginning of the end
Many of Primm’s later issues were not self-inflicted. Like other struggling casinos, the COVID-19 pandemic closure accelerated Primm’s decline. Primm Valley Resort and Whiskey Pete’s reopened when permitted on June 4, 2020. Primm Valley Resort was close to full operations as its hotel, entire casino, including table games and sportsbook, and two restaurants reopened.
Whiskey Pete’s reopened only as slots. The table game pit remained for years, but live games never returned. Two restaurants reopened. However, outside of a few big weekends when Primm Valley was full, the hotel remained empty.
Whiskey Pete’s had some of the worst video poker we have ever recorded. Most slots were old titles. Few players visited. It became clear that Whiskey Pete’s should have never reopened after the pandemic closure if no attempt was made to give passing motorists a reason to stop. We rarely saw more than a handful of players, and it was sometimes completely deserted. Whiskey Pete’s permanently closed on December 17, 2024.
Buffalo Bill’s reopened in December 2022. It became the only Primm hotel as the one at Primm Valley Resort closed. Live table games and all dining moved to Buffalo Bill’s. Primm Valley Resort became nothing but slots. It had no restaurants. Its bar was only open on weekends.
The hybrid table game experiment flopped
Buffalo Bill’s made a major error in its pit. After a bizarre 2024 cage robbery at Primm Valley Resort, Affinity Gaming decided to remove live table games and cancel all chips in Primm and at Silver Sevens, its Las Vegas casino.
Hybrid games replaced the live games. It started with Roll to Win Craps, a popular live dealer chipless version of the game. Dual Wheel Roulette and Easy Blackjack replaced those live games, and Three Card Poker disappeared.
Hybrid roulette and blackjack have failed almost everywhere the games were installed. Primm was no different. Players and dealers hated the games. Buffalo Bill’s table game business collapsed. The hybrid games stopped operating in June 2025, about eight months after installation, and a few weeks before the property closed.
While the pit failed, video poker improved, and it seemed more people were playing the bar and floor games. The best game on the floor was 8/5 Bonus Poker, a 99% game. Some $1 bar games also returned 99%. It seemed the slot business was improving, but the empty, silent pit area was a drag on the ambiance.
Buffalo Bill’s closed
Buffalo Bill’s closed on July 7, 2025. The reason it became the main Primm resort was the Star of the Desert Arena. Primm built a large audience around Latino bands. As the 2025 immigration enforcement peaked, visitation from core customers decreased. The number of booked shows dropped significantly, and Primm’s visitation slipped again.
Primm Valley’s operations increased after Buffalo Bill’s closed, including the reopening of the hotel and a diner. A steakhouse reopened just last month.
Little effort was put into drawing players to Primm Valley. In fact, better games, like the $1 six-way progressive 9/5 Double Double Bonus machines, disappeared after most operations moved back there. The bar games matched the ones at Buffalo Bill’s.
Slot players got some new machines. Dozens of older ones were removed from the floor during a major remodel.
Live table games were not available in Primm since October 2024. That was about to change as live tables returned to the floor in April and were to open next week, as we recently reported. It appears that it will never happen.
The likely final nail in Primm’s coffin was the sharp increase in gas prices. Gas was $6.39 per gallon during our April 2026 Primm visit. This hurts recreational consumer spending and interstate traffic.
Primm never tried to stand out when times got tough
In the end, the main problem Primm faced was that it mostly kept doing the same thing, even when it was obvious that thinking was obsolete. When something broke, it was left to rot, whether it was the amusement rides, the tram system, or aging hotel rooms.
Primm could have been a viable destination had it picked a direction that did not include grinding the assets until there was nothing left.
There may be hope. The Primm family leased the land to Affinity Gaming and will retake it after the closure. A new operator is a long shot, but not an impossibility. Any operator that takes a chance on three failed casinos in an isolated desert town will be making the biggest gamble of their lives.
