Greece Advances Two Athens Casino Resorts in €2.1 Billion Expansion

^{Two casino resort projects worth more than €2.1 billion are under construction in the Athens metropolitan area, both due to open by summer 2029. (Photo: acediscovery / Wikimedia Commons)}

Greece is set to gain more than €2.1 billion (about $2.5 billion) of investment across two casino resort developments in the Athens area, both scheduled to open by summer 2029. They will be the first large-scale casino projects built inside the Greek capital's metropolitan area.

Gaming is being positioned as one element of a wider hospitality and conference offering at both sites, at a time when land-based casinos across Europe are weighing their future against fast-growing online play.

Hard Rock's €1.8 Billion Elliniko Resort

The larger of the two schemes, the Hard Rock Integrated Resort Complex at Elliniko, is being built by Hard Rock with Greek construction group GEK TERNA on the site of the former Elliniko Airport. It carries a price tag of €1.8 billion (around $2.07 billion), and roughly 20% of the work has been completed so far.

The development centres on a 197-metre tower housing an 1,100-room hotel, a conference centre and an indoor entertainment arena, with restaurants and bars completing the property. A 15,000 sq m casino floor sits within the wider complex.

Executives at Hard Rock Athens IRC describe the resort primarily as a hospitality, entertainment and conference destination. They project it could lift tourist arrivals to the Attica region by around 10%, with gaming making up only one part of the overall offering.

Project Voria Relocates Casino Gaming to Maroussi

The second project, Project Voria, will relocate the Regency Casino Mont Parnes to Maroussi under a €380 million ($437 million) mixed-use plan backed by the Lampsa Group and Intralot interests. Alongside an 8,000 sq m casino, the scheme includes a five-star hotel, conference facilities and wellness amenities.

More than half of the Maroussi site is set to transfer to the municipality as public green space, a feature developers cite as evidence of the project's civic dimension alongside its commercial one.

Growth on this scale has not gone unquestioned. Transport specialists have warned that the two developments could add significant pressure to the already congested Poseidonos and Kifissias avenues unless further public transport investment accompanies the construction timeline.

Industry figures have also argued that concern over gambling harm should focus on online platforms rather than regulated land-based venues. Former Hellenic Gaming Commission president Dimitris Ntzanatos noted that licensed land-based casinos account for only a small proportion of Greece's overall gambling market, with illegal online gambling posing the greater social challenge.

The two Athens resorts fold gaming into far larger tourism complexes, echoing an integrated-resort model that regulators from Singapore to the United States have used to tie casino licences to wider hospitality investment.

The Regency Casino Mont Parnes, which Project Voria will replace, has operated on Mount Parnitha north of Athens for decades and reaching it currently involves a mountain road and cable car. Moving the licence down to Maroussi would place a casino within the city's commercial core for the first time.

Both venues will operate under the oversight of the Hellenic Gaming Commission, which regulates Greece's licensed casino estate. The regulator has spent recent years pushing operators to modernise ageing properties while cracking down on unlicensed online sites competing for the same players.

Both developments still depend on their construction timelines holding to bring the first casino floors inside Athens into operation by the end of the decade. For now, the projects mark one of the most significant expansions of regulated European gambling infrastructure in the region, according to reporting by Yogonet.