Galactic Wilds

About Galactic Wilds

A massive steel truss weighing about 180,000 pounds has been lifted into place at Durango Casino in southwest Las Vegas as construction reaches the halfway point of its $385 million expansion.

The huge structure, measuring nearly 140 feet long and 20 feet tall, was installed Friday, September 18, as part of the second expansion of Station Casinos’ Durango property.

Suffolk Construction, the project’s general contractor, used a crane weighing roughly 650,000 pounds for the lift, with a second crane assisting with the operation.

What is Galactic Wilds?

One of the operator’s most significant challenges is the increase in gambling tax enforced over recent years. Petra has been particularly vocal about this and the company’s profitability has taken a reasonable hit, since the first tax increase to 34.2% of GGR came into effect on 1 January 2025.

Holland Casino now pays 37.8% of GGR to the state, as per the additional increase in 2026, but with labour tax on top the business pays around 52% before they can look at their base running costs. It is not a small burden by any stretch of the imagination, so it is heartening to see the business doing well despite the tightening tax burden.

With such a significant rise in tax, you would forgive the company for cutting wherever possible, but Petra says they have made it work by maximising efficiency, restructuring, and maintaining their offering so the customer doesn’t notice that anything has changed.

What is Galactic Wilds?

“There’s this huge, proven revenue opportunity, but it’s also about continuity of the brand that exists across the whole platform and the whole offering,” Wilson adds.

Even the most flexible technology cannot do all the work itself. Wilson is blunt about what happens when an operator treats an integration as the end of the job.

“If I just give you one of our games or our jackpot engine and you just plug it in and leave it there to collect dust, you will come back and tell me in three months’ time it’s not working,” he says. “And I will say to you, ‘How have you invested in the product?’”