'Lively on the Bayou' By David McKee
"Experience” is a word you’ll hear a great deal when talking to Live! Louisiana General Manager John Chaszar. He’s heading up the newest casino-resort in the Shreveport/Bossier City area of Louisiana. During construction, executives of parent company Cordish Gaming talked up a prospective, Las Vegas-quality casino that would be coming to the becalmed bayou area. What they delivered appears to have made good on that promise.
Right from the start, Live! Louisiana is a hit. It grossed $12 million in its first month of business, last March, and followed that up with a $13.3 million April, giving market leader Margaritaville an intense run for its money. Live! Louisiana depleted Margaritaville and all other casinos in the area to the tune of double-digit declines as players flocked to the newcomer.
To helm its newest in a string of highly successful properties, Cordish Gaming tapped Michigan State
University graduate John Chaszar. He’s late of Tropicana Evansville, which he debuted and which is now Bally’s Evansville. Chaszar’s three-decade career in casinos has taken him through nine states, including postings at Hollywood Baton Rouge and a fateful term at Hollywood Bay St. Louis, in Mississippi, where he felt the brunt of Hurricane Katrina’s fury.
A veteran of Penn Entertainment, Chaszar now finds himself competing with his former bosses. Given the moonshot opening of Live! Louisiana, it seemed a logical place to begin our conversation, which has been edited for clarity.
Image: Live! Louisiana General Manager John Chaszar
Congratulations on the opening. How have the first few months of business been?
Awesome. I don’t think any of us got into the business to build casinos, although we love to operate them. It’s always a challenge and always rewarding when you build them from ground up. Business has been great. Obviously everybody wants more but the business has been really, really, really good.
What are the most popular aspects of the casino so far?
Oh god! Prime Rib, our steak house, has hit the ball out of the park. It’s a wonderful venue. People are just amazed by Sports & Social, with the large video screens for watching sporting events. That, combined with our partnership with DraftKings, has made it one unique aspect in this market, where it’s a great place to come and dine, and watch a game, and occasionally place a bet on some sporting events to add to the excitement.
How are you differentiating yourselves from the many other casinos in the market?
That’s the million-dollar question in any market. We all have slot machines. It’s obviously through service. We have hired the cream of the crop of this market. Also, we have cultivated some great folks here. It’s through service. A $300 million investment didn’t hurt. But it’s always going to be through service. We have some phenomenal people here. We have the highest service scores in our company. That’s how we’re going to win folks over and how we’re going to get folks back to this market.
What is the Live brand meant to convey and how important is it?
The Live brand is probably twofold. Number one, entertainment. Live is known for its entertainment. We do that through many different aspects. We do that not only through entertainment, seven days a week, somewhere on this property. We don’t just do it through our patrons. We do it in all aspects of our business, including employee events: having DJs at a meeting at seven o’clock in the morning. That’s half of the experience with Live and half of what we’re known for. But we’re also known for our dining experiences. Our company started off as a restaurant company many, many years ago. A lot of casinos build restaurants for a place for people to eat. The Cordish family has built restaurants to create experiences. When you come here you’ll get an experience, whether it’s an Italian experience at Ridotto Grand Café, an Asian experience at Lok Fu or a very elegant, great experience in Prime Rib. Everything is about experiences here, not just fulfilling a need to eat.
Cordish has promised a Vegas-caliber experience. What does that mean and how is it possible on a $270 million budget, given what they spend in Las Vegas nowadays?
[chuckles] It’s all a matter of perspective. We’re a Midwest casino. We’re not going to build the multi-billion dollar fountains of Bellagio out front. But when you walk into our casino it’s a single-level, land-based casino. It is a phenomenal experience. It is something that you will only experience in Las Vegas. Very, very few regional casinos are going to be able to offer this, especially on riverboats. That’s why the decision to allow land-based casinos here in Louisiana was a great thing to do for this market. Other markets have already done this, whether it be in Indiana or Iowa. It has changed the people’s way of experiencing gaming in those regional markets.
How did your experiences in Evansville, Baton Rouge and Bay St. Louis prepared you for Shreveport/Bossier City?
I would hope that I matured over time with the experiences that I had. But in particular, Evansville was the first land-based casino that was allowed by legislation in the state of Indiana. There I actually built a brand-new casino from the ground up across the street from the riverboat, Casino Aztar. We actually moved from the riverboat operation onto the land. So that was one experience that was pretty closely related to this.
Baton Rouge was important for the Louisiana experience: getting used to the regulations here. But Bay St. Louis is probably the biggest, most important experience of my life. I was there when Hurricane Katrina wiped out the entire casino industry on the Gulf Coast. So I was an integral part of rebuilding that entire resort from ground up after Hurricane Katrina. So not only did it teach me about the construction and insurance
What challenges are specific to this market?
[laughs] Prior to us arriving, the biggest challenge is this market really drove customers away. There wasn’t a lot of reinvestment. This market, I’m going to be just guessing at the numbers, I wouldn’t be surprised if this market was 50 percent coming out the Dallas market. And now it’s less than 10 percent. We’ve given people not a reason to come to the Shreveport/Bossier market. But, with our revitalization of the old Diamond Jack’s casino and creation of a brand-new entertainment experience, we’ve given people in Dallas another reason to come back to the Bossier market, not just for gaming but for an entire dining and entertainment experience here in Bossier City. The biggest challenge is just convincing people to come back to the Bossier market.
What’s your customer mix so far?
The majority of our customers come from within 50 miles of the property. All of these casinos here were built to accommodate weekend business. Hence the reason we have these Goliath casinos of 500 rooms or more – to accommodate folks coming from as far south as Houston, as far east as Jackson, Mississippi, and as far west as Dallas. The majority of our weekday processes, it also matured me in the aspect of resilience – what I learned not only about myself but the people around me, rebuilding our lives, not just a casino.
I challenge you to go to any Station Casino in Las Vegas. It’s the exact same experience you have there, if not better here. It’s just all the different aspects that you can do with a land-based facility. $300 million is not chump change. We’re not a multi-billion dollar casino but I can promise you that a lot of aspects of what you experience here are equal to or better than what you experience in Las Vegas. business comes from within 50 miles but the majority of our weekend business comes from within 250 miles.
Perhaps you could tell us a little about the property: How large is it, particularly the gaming floor?
The gaming space itself is 47,000 square feet. We have over a thousand slot machines. We have 40 table games. Everything is incorporated right there. We’re the only property in the market where you can walk right out to the parking garage off the casino floor. We have 549 hotel rooms. We have four primary restaurants. We have three bars, which are just for every day. We have PBR, which is our Country bar, which is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. It gives a whole other element of entertainment and excitement to our casino that nobody else in this market has. It’s a pretty well-rounded experience. You don’t have to leave the property to have a great resort weekend with us. We’re really excited about what we’ve built here.
How has the sports betting business been?
It’s good. Our partnership with DraftKings was an immediate success in this market. DraftKings wasn’t in this market. It’s another amenity that we offer for excitement. Personally, I create more excitement by betting on teams I normally wouldn’t root for. It’s a great, little amenity that we can have at the property and just one more aspect of the gaming experience that gives people a reason to come here and have fun.
Do you envision expansion at some point?
[laughs] Let me get used to these clothes first. Yeah, I do envision that someday we’ll do something at this property but right now we’re just trying to fine-tune what we’ve built. We believe we perfectly fit this market and we’re doing what we believe we’re going to do at this point. I believe we’re actually exceeding some of our expectations. Let’s refine what we have. If you were to ask me, in the future, I can almost promise you that we would definitely look at expanding some of the entertainment space that we have, so that we can accommodate larger concerts here at the property. But those are all future thoughts. Right now we’re just concentrating on what we have and perfecting what we have right now.
Finally, what is your message to the markets who bring you customers?
We’re back in business. Bossier is back in business. It’s again a premier destination for the entertainment experience and the gaming experience. It’s a reason to come here versus heading north to Oklahoma. People used to come here for this entertainment experience and they’ve left us. We’re back and we’re open for business, and Bossier is back, bigger and better than it was before.
The Casino Life Magazine Team would like to thank John Chaszar General Manager Live! Louisiana and his PR team for all his help and assistance with this exclusive feature.
*** This exclusive feature was originally published in June 2025 edition of Casino Life Magazine Issue 178 Volume 21**
