Catawba Two Kings Casino opens first phase of $1B North Carolina resort

The Catawba Nation opened the first phase of its long-anticipated Two Kings Casino Resort in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, on Wednesday, drawing thousands of patrons within hours of unlocking the doors and marking the most consequential new tribal property to come online on the Eastern Seaboard this year. The introductory casino, set roughly 35 miles west of Charlotte just off Interstate 85, replaces a temporary facility the tribe has operated since 2021 and sets the stage for a fully built-out $1 billion destination scheduled to open in the spring of 2027.

Phase one delivers 1,350 slot machines, 36 electronic table games, 22 traditional live table games, a 68-seat restaurant, an 18-seat bar, sports betting kiosks and a player rewards desk. Tribal officials framed the opening as the formal beginning of the Catawba Nation's commercial-scale gaming era after years of litigation, federal trust-land approvals and construction that started in earnest in 2023.

What changes for North Carolina players

For the casino-going public in the Charlotte metro, the practical impact is immediate. Customers who previously made the multi-hour drive into the western Cherokee market — anchored by Harrah's Cherokee and Harrah's Cherokee Valley River — now have a fully credentialed Class III venue at the South Carolina border. That redraws the competitive map in a region that, until this week, had effectively been a duopoly between the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' two mountain properties.

The new facility's location is no accident. Kings Mountain sits at a deliberately chosen point along the I-85 corridor that pulls from Charlotte, Gastonia, Spartanburg and Greenville, while remaining inside North Carolina's borders. That siting matters because the Catawba Nation's headquarters and historic homelands lie on the South Carolina side of the state line — a fact that fueled years of jurisdictional disputes over whether the tribe could lawfully take this parcel into federal trust for gaming purposes.

The Department of the Interior's affirmative determination in 2020, later upheld in federal litigation, settled the underlying land question. What opened on Wednesday is the commercial expression of that legal outcome.

A staged path to a 2 million-square-foot destination

Two Kings is being built in deliberate phases. The introductory casino now in operation is, in effect, a permanent replacement for the modest temporary structure that has anchored the site for five years. The next phase — the one that will turn Kings Mountain into a true regional destination — includes a 24-story hotel tower with 385 rooms, more than 4,300 slots, 100 table games, 11 restaurants, 11 bars and roughly 3,500 parking spaces across nearly 2 million square feet.

Tribal economic development staff put the construction headcount at several hundred trade workers currently on site, with an estimated 2,200 permanent positions expected once the full resort opens in 2027. That labor profile makes Two Kings one of the largest single hospitality employers projected for the western Piedmont this decade.

This is more than a casino opening — it's the moment the Catawba Nation steps into the modern tribal gaming industry at scale, after decades on the sidelines.

For context on how tribal property openings of this size ripple through state economies, see our recent tribal gaming economic impact analysis, which tracked the $43.9 billion in gross gaming revenue the National Indian Gaming Commission reported for FY2024.

The competitive and regulatory ripple

North Carolina's commercial gaming landscape has been unusually quiet for a state of its size. Outside the two Cherokee properties in the mountains, there are no commercial casinos, and a multi-year political fight over expanded commercial gambling has produced no statute. That regulatory vacuum is exactly what makes the Catawba opening so significant: it represents new supply in a state where supply has been deliberately constrained for years.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has not publicly commented on the opening, but the tribe's compact arrangements with the state and its longstanding exclusivity expectations are likely to come under fresh scrutiny as the Two Kings footprint grows. For a primer on how compact exclusivity provisions typically interact with new tribal entrants in the same state, our Legal Guide walks through the IGRA framework that governs these arrangements.

Sports betting is already legal in North Carolina under a 2023 statute that licenses commercial operators on a statewide mobile basis. The Two Kings kiosks operating from day one give the Catawba Nation a physical retail presence in that market — a small but symbolically important on-ramp for any future expansion into sports-betting management.

What to watch next

Three things are worth tracking in the coming months. First, attendance and gross gaming revenue figures, which will start filtering through tribal disclosures and NIGC regional aggregates by the second half of 2026. Second, any movement in the Eastern Band's posture toward the new entrant, particularly around marketing reach into the Charlotte DMA. Third, hiring velocity at the Kings Mountain site — the 2,200-job target is the number tribal officials repeatedly cited during the legislative and trust-land fights, and the labor market will tell us quickly whether that number holds.

For now, the Catawba Nation has done what very few federally recognized tribes manage to pull off in a single generation: take a small reservation footprint, win a multi-state legal battle, and stand up a $1 billion-class gaming property on the right side of the interstate. The next test is operational.