Since gambling became legal in Michigan in the 1980s, there has been a thriving casino scene. Home to 26 land-based casinos, only 11 states have more than the Great Lakes State. And it's not just the casino that's on offer, many of these establishments are connected to luxury resorts featuring spas and top-class restaurants.
But, unsurprisingly, we're mostly concerned with the casinos, which are a huge part of the economy. Casinos in Michigan brought in a whopping $3.2 billion in revenue as recently as 2022, and it's also just one of five states that allow natives to play at online casino sites. Safe to say, Michigan and casinos go hand-in-hand.
And with that in mind, our research and analytics teams decided it was time to find out one of the most important questions of all - which casino in the state of Michigan is the luckiest, and which is the unluckiest out of the following:
To find out, we went to the place it matter most - the reviews from real-life visitors and casino players. We measured luck-related keywords such as "lucky", "won", "winning", "success" to determine which casinos had the highest percentage, relative to their reviews.
Wait just a second, as we need to emphasize that how casinos work is basically the same in every establishment, with some differences or slight rule changes such as different blackjack variations or slot volatilities. The data we collected correlates to real players playing casino games at these establishments, so while we can't promise one is luckier than the other, we can say some have more reviews with luck-related keywords.
So, with that disclaimer out of the way, we can reveal that the Gun Lake Casino, located off Exit 61 on U.S. 131, halfway between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, is the luckiest casino in Michigan with a mouth-watering 43.2% luck-related keyword percentage.
As well as plenty of instances of keywords such as "luck", "lucky" and "win", the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi-owned casino had the highest "jackpot" percentage too, with 3.84% - suggesting that those who visit not only get lucky, but they get VERY lucky.
Next up was the Lac Vieux Desert Resort and Casino with an impressive 33.85%, followed by the Four Winds Casino New Buffalo with 30.78%. This rounds off the top three luckiest casinos in the entire state of Michigan.
But there were some impressive scores to follow up, with Firekeeper's Casino (30.68%) and Saganing Eagles Landing (30.48%) both performing well.
The Soaring Eagle Casino, the most reviewed casino with 1015 user reviews, finished 11th overall with a luck keyword percentage of 23.15%.
Someone has to be awarded this title (or is it the wooden spoon?), and that goes to the Bay Mills Resort & Casino, with just 14.81% luck-related keywords in their reviews.
Bay Mills is, in fact, unlucky to be in last place, with the Island Resort & Casino coming in just 0.03% ahead of them in second last or 16th place at 14.84%.
Casinos.com utilized Tripadvisor reviews to do an in-depth analysis of phrases associated with luck to determine the luckiest and unluckiest casinos in the state of Michigan. We calculated the percentage of luck-rated mentions in the total Tripadvisor reviews and extrapolated them as if all casinos had the same number of reviews for fairness. Only casinos with a minimum of 50 reviews qualified for this study.
The data and graphics on this page are free to use as long as proper credit is given by linking to the original article.
Colm Phelan has spent several years working in the iGaming industry and has plenty of experience when it comes to writing, researching and rigorously testing online casinos and sportsbooks. While Colm has invested a lot of his time into the digital marketing world but his other passions include poker and a variety of sports including golf, NFL and football.
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