- The Alabama-Coushatta Tribe opens a 300-machine temporary casino in Leggett, Texas, in August 2026.
- The facility offers only Class II electronic bingo, with no slots or table games permitted.
- The temporary casino bridges to a 3,400-machine permanent resort that broke ground June 18, 2026.
- The permanent resort’s first phase is scheduled to open in late 2028.
LEGGETT, Texas – The Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas will open a temporary casino in Leggett in August with 300 electronic bingo machines and no slots or table games, a stopgap for the 3,400-machine Naskila Casino Resort that federal law confines to bingo-class gaming.
A 24-Hour Bingo Hall, Opening In Weeks
The tribe’s temporary casino in Leggett will run around the clock on the future resort site, with 300 electronic bingo machines, smoking and non-smoking areas, a 24-hour dining venue and the Seven Feathers Players Club. The tribe says the interim venue will create 110 jobs and operate until the permanent resort opens.
“This temporary facility will provide a positive economic impact for Polk County, surrounding communities and for the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe,” Chairman Ricky Sylestine said in the tribe’s announcement.
Why It Is All Bingo
No slot machine or blackjack table will be legal on the floor, and the reason is federal law, not choice. The 1987 Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and Alabama-Coushatta Indian Tribes of Texas Restoration Act ties both tribes’ gaming rights to what Texas itself permits.
In Ysleta del Sur Pueblo v. Texas, decided 5-4 on June 15, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the act bars only gaming Texas prohibits outright. Because Texas allows charitable bingo, the tribes may run bingo, including the electronic Class II machines that anchor Naskila.
Slots and live table games fall under Class III, which Texas prohibits statewide and which federal law would allow only through a tribal-state compact the state has refused to negotiate. That line keeps a resort marketed like a Las Vegas property limited to bingo, in a state whose lawmakers have kept Texas online casinos and commercial gambling halls off the map. The same barrier is why the state’s own casino magnate builds everywhere but home, as Texas still bans commercial casinos.
A Resort The Size Of A Casino, Run Like A Bingo Hall
The permanent Naskila Casino Resort broke ground June 18 on 95 acres of tribal land, a roughly 685,000-square-foot project with about 3,400 electronic bingo machines, a 366-room hotel, a resort-style pool and 35,000 square feet of event space. General Manager Keith Sherer called the groundbreaking “an important milestone in Naskila’s journey and the future of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe.”
The tribe has run electronic bingo at its existing Naskila Casino in nearby Livingston since 2016, one of the few in-state options among Texas gambling sites. It credits that operation with $251.7 million in annual economic impact, and it survived years of state efforts to shut it down before the 2022 ruling settled the question. The permanent resort’s first phase is due in late 2028.