Caesars Entertainment is Being Bumped From S&P 500

By Scott Roeben, on September 05 2025
2 min read 9 comments
Las Vegas

Caesars Entertainment (CZR) is set to be removed from the S&P 500 index on September 22, 2025, as part of S&P Dow Jones Indices’ quarterly rebalancing.

This decision comes after Caesars’ market capitalization declined to approximately $5.5 billion, below the S&P 500’s minimum threshold of $22.7 billion.

We do not understand many of the words we just wrote, but it does not sound good.

It’s fairly common for a Caesar to be tossed.

We are not a stock market person. We gave all our money to our sister to manage. What could possibly go wrong?

What we as a layperson do know is Caesars Entertainment stock is down almost 30% since the beginning of 2025 (it’s lost more than half its value in the last two years), and while we blame F1, it’s probably something more nuanced. Recently, we’ll go with the dumbassery going on with trade policy and hits to international tourism.

There has been a tidal wave of bad press about Las Vegas in recent months, and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has done little to nothing to guide the sky-is-falling narrative.

Caesars Entertainment also has a metric ass-ton of debt ($12.3 billion in aggregate principal debt) it’s having trouble getting out from under, even with the sale of the World Series of Poker and Linq Promenade at $500 million and $275 million respectively.

In case you are also a layperson, the S&P 500 (Standard & Poor’s 500) is a stock market index that tracks the performance of 500 of the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. It’s one of the best benchmarks for the overall U.S. stock market because it covers a wide range of industries and represents about 80% of the total U.S. market capitalization.

The technical term in financial circles for being removed from the S&P 500 is “Yikes!”

There should be a “Yikes!” index, seriously.

David Copperfield’s phone messages to Jeffrey Epstein are released: Yikes.

Construction guys are building on the Trop site when the ballpark isn’t funded: Yikes.

The LVCVA debuts one of the most tone-deaf tourism ads in history: Yikes.

Being removed from the index carries serious implications: it strips away prestige, reduces visibility and signals that a company no longer meets the criteria for size, stability or profitability.

Because many index funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds) automatically hold S&P 500 stocks, removal forces large-scale selling, which often drives a company’s share price down.

Liquidity can shrink and volatility can increase. Which, as any of our former girlfriends can tell you, isn’t pleasant.

Losing a spot in the S&P 500 can damage investor confidence, raise borrowing costs and make it harder for the company to raise capital.

The Caesars empire goes far beyond Las Vegas, but we only really care about the Las Vegas part.

Mostly, we care about liquidity shrinkage and engorged borrowing costs because if a company has to slow its spending, we get fewer shiny new things.

Thanks a lot for kicking Las Vegas when it’s down, S&P 500.