The Mohegan Native American tribe spent $1.6 billion and almost a decade building a gambling venue near Seoul with three five-star hotels, a 15,000-seat arena and a water park so lavish that Netflix chose to film a hit dating show there.
The Inspire Entertainment Resort was Mohegan’s first casino project outside North America, one designed to tap into a lucrative market of Chinese gamblers, who spent $28 billion on games in 2024 in Macau. While that Chinese territory dominates the global gambling market, Inspire was set to become one of the largest high-end establishments of its kind in Asia. But going all-in on a casino resort in the region proved to be a risky bet for the tribe.
Less than a year after Inspire’s 2024 grand opening, a missed performance target caused Mohegan to lose control of the project. Now another investor, the private equity giant Bain Capital, rather than the tribe, holds the reins.
A South Korea casino was a gamble from the start.
Mohegan operates some of the biggest casinos in the United States. Mohegan Sun, its flagship property on the tribe’s reservation in Connecticut, is a widely recognized casino with billboards across the Northeast and a major events venue that has hosted performances by Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift and Jay-Z. The casino made the tribe $260 million last year.
In South Korea, citizens cannot legally gamble anywhere except at one government-managed casino resort. That meant that all of Inspire’s casino customers would have to be foreign.
But Mohegan executives saw an untapped Asian market for a casino near Incheon International Airport, one of the world’s busiest travel hubs with frequent, short flights to Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo. Of particular interest were the millions of Chinese travelers who were visiting South Korea each year when work on Inspire began.
South Korean officials said over the years that they hoped to develop an alternative tourist destination to Macau, the Chinese territory widely known as the world’s gambling capital. Macau recorded a decline in casino revenues in the 2010s as it was rocked by a government crackdown on corruption.
Inspire had the potential to be “transformational” for Mohegan, company executives told JPMorgan investors in 2016. Mohegan declined to respond to repeated requests for specific details about Inspire.
Mohegan said that it ultimately committed more than $1 billion to the project, including $300 million in cash. Bain Capital also saw a good investment. In 2021, a Bain subsidiary and other financial institutions signed a $275 million loan agreement to help Mohegan finance Inspire, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“It was certainly a risky move on behalf of Mohegan,” said Andrew Tottenham, a gambling industry consultant in London. “If you’re not getting local people getting to play, you are dependent totally on foreigners staying in your hotel or hotels nearby.”
For all its ambition, a project as large as Inspire needed many things to go right. Construction did not begin until 2019, while rising building costs cut into revenues. Then international tourism plummeted when the Covid pandemic hit. There were labor shortages, too.
The opening, initially set for 2022, was postponed.
“It was just a string of bad luck,” said Steve Gallaway, a consultant who worked on Inspire after its opening. “The projected returns were never a grand slam.”
There was a soft launch in November 2023, when Mohegan opened Inspire’s hotel rooms, convention center, restaurants and arena. But the casino, a main moneymaker, did not open until February 2024.
“They misjudged how quickly they could get this up and running and underestimated the challenges of going international at that scale,” said Robert Heller, a gambling consultant in New York State.
When Mohegan fell short, Bain moved in.
Mohegan became the first Native American Tribe to own and operate a casino in Asia.
But after the resort opened, Mohegan repeatedly reported low casino profits and high operational costs at Inspire. The resort lost about $104 million in its first year of operations, according to an audit submitted to the South Korean government.
On Feb. 13, 2025, Mohegan delivered a quarterly earnings report. Although it had never missed a payment on its loans, the results fell short of earnings targets. On the same day, Bain called in its loan two years early. It said the shortfall had breached a financing covenant, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential matters. About a year after Inspire’s grand opening, Bain seized control of the resort.
Bain describes itself as a “long-term partner” for Inspire, and has stressed its commitment to the project. But the loan call was a shock to Mohegan, which said in its 2025 annual report that it had no intention of abandoning Inspire. Analysts noted that a project of that scale could not be expected to turn a profit so soon after opening.
“I don’t think Inspire performed more poorly than other resorts across the globe,” said Keith Whyte, a gambling industry consultant.
After the takeover, things slowly turned around. Under new management, Inspire cut its losses and reported that gambling revenues rose 150 percent while visitor numbers increased by 50 percent. The resort reported a pretax profit for the first time last year, for the six months ending in October 2025.
Sujin Yang, an Inspire spokeswoman, said that the resort steadied its business and projected continued growth without making major changes to its strategy or budget cuts. She said what the resort needed was time.
“For a project of this magnitude, it takes a few years to stabilize operations and start to see results,” she said.
The company that envisioned the glitzy complex is no longer around to enjoy the results.
Publicly, Mohegan is projecting confidence about its business strategy. It told investors in December that, even after losing control of the South Korean resort, it was healthier than ever, pointing to the success of its North American operations.
And there are signs that Mohegan is not completely out of the picture when it comes to the Inspire resort. Mohegan and Bain have maintained a professional relationship and have engaged in some informal conversations, according to the two people familiar with the matter.
For now, Inspire’s prestige is growing. It recently served as the luxurious “paradise” destination for successful matches in the fifth season of “Single’s Inferno,” a hit South Korean dating show on Netflix. They dined in the resort’s opulent suites and swam in the private outdoor pools.
Sung Kim, 40, who was in the casino to play blackjack and baccarat, said she had flown in from Macau, where she could not gamble because the resorts there didn’t offer child care for her 5-year-old son.
“It’s close to the airport. It’s convenient. A huge plus is all the kids stuff,” said Ms. Kim’s sister, Shannon Park, 32. Besides the water park, Inspire offers cooking classes for children, climbing walls and an indoor trampoline park.
Yu Jin, 36, who was visiting from northeastern China for the third time, said he was drawn by the “Aurora,” a dazzling 500-foot animated display that runs along the ceiling of a hallway at the resort. Videos of it were widely shared on Chinese social media.
But Mr. Yu, who was holding a thick wad of bills near a baccarat table, said that he would soon be flying to Macau, where he said the rooms were better, the food was familiar and he could speak his own language.
“Everything is better in Macau,” he said.
