CAD$10.7 million, moved from one pocket to another
That is the number at the centre of the VICI Properties racetracks deal announced on 28 September 2026, and the strangest thing about it is that it changes nothing about how much rent VICI collects. The company signed a new 20-year triple-net lease with Highfield Investment Group covering the real estate at Century Mile and Century Downs in Alberta, starting at CAD$10.7 million (US$7.5 million) a year. It then cut the rent under its existing Century Master Lease by exactly CAD$10.7 million. Same total rent, new tenant on two of the buildings.
If you only ever look at gaming from the player side of the glass, this is a useful deal to sit with. It shows, in one clean transaction, how the ownership of casino and racing property has been split away from the business of running it, and why that split is now the default in North American gaming.
Who actually owns a racetrack
Three separate questions hide inside “who owns this venue”:
- Who owns the land and buildings. Here, VICI, a real estate investment trust that specialises in gaming property.
- Who runs the business inside them. Previously Century Casinos; after this deal, Highfield, which bought the racetrack operations.
- Who holds the licences that make gambling legal there. The operator, subject to provincial regulators, not the landlord.
A casino REIT owns the first and leases it to the second. It does not deal cards, set odds, or take a cut of anyone’s losses. It collects rent. That distinction matters for how you read any announcement with a REIT’s name on it: VICI’s revenue line is contractual, while the operator’s revenue line rises and falls with footfall, handle and hold.
The terms, in plain numbers
| Term | Detail |
|---|---|
| Properties | Century Mile and Century Downs racetracks, Alberta, Canada |
| Tenant | Highfield Investment Group (Calgary based) |
| Lease type | Triple-net, 20 years |
| Starting annual base rent | CAD$10.7 million (US$7.5 million) |
| Renewal options | Four, of five years each |
| Rent escalator | Greater of 1.25% or Canadian CPI, capped at 2.50% |
| Minimum capital expenditure | 1% of annual net revenue at each property |
| Effect on VICI’s total rent | Neutral: Century Master Lease rent reduced by the same CAD$10.7 million |
| Expected close | Fourth quarter, or the first quarter of 2027, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals |
What “triple-net” actually loads onto the tenant
Triple-net means the tenant carries the three big ongoing costs that a landlord would normally absorb: property taxes, insurance and maintenance. The rent cheque is the rent cheque, and everything else that a building costs to keep standing is the operator’s problem.
That is why gaming REIT contracts look so placid next to operator earnings. A leaky roof at Century Downs, a bad winter, a soft quarter of racing handle, a provincial rule change that dents slot revenue — none of those flow through to VICI’s rent. They flow through to Highfield. Long leases plus triple-net terms are how a landlord turns a cyclical, regulated, weather-exposed entertainment business into something that behaves a bit more like a bond.
The escalator is where the real negotiation happens
“Greater of 1.25% or Canadian CPI, capped at 2.50%” is a single clause doing two jobs. The 1.25% floor protects the landlord in a low-inflation stretch: rent still grows even if prices don’t. The 2.50% ceiling protects the tenant in a high-inflation stretch, because a racetrack’s admission prices and gaming revenue do not track CPI in real time, and an uncapped escalator in a bad decade is how operators get squeezed into default.
Run the arithmetic and the range is wide. Compound CAD$10.7 million at the 1.25% floor for the 19 escalations in a 20-year term and you land near CAD$13.5 million. At the 2.50% cap, it is closer to CAD$17.1 million. Both are illustrative, since the actual path depends on Canadian CPI, but the gap between them is roughly CAD$3.6 million of annual rent by year 20. That is the entire argument, and it is settled in a single sentence of the lease.
The 1% capex clause deserves more attention than it gets
VICI also agreed to a minimum capital expenditure requirement equal to 1% of annual net revenue at each property. In other words, the tenant is contractually obliged to keep spending money on the buildings.
A landlord with a 20-year term and four five-year renewal options is thinking about what the asset looks like in 2046, not 2027. Left to pure short-term incentive, a thinly capitalised operator would defer everything deferrable and hand back a tired shell. A capex floor is the landlord’s insurance against exactly that. It is also the clause most likely to show up as something a visitor can actually see: refurbished floors, new food and beverage, updated gaming and betting terminals. Adrian Munro, Highfield’s president, framed the plan as modernising the racetracks, and the lease gives that intention a number attached to it.
Why Century let go of the operations
The transaction follows Century Casinos’ sale of the racetrack operations to Highfield. John Payne, VICI’s president and COO, said the deal “helps deleverage the Century balance sheet” and described the collaboration as supporting a tenant working through its long-term strategy. Strip out the corporate register and the logic is straightforward: an operator sells a non-core business, uses the proceeds to reduce debt, and sheds the rent attached to those two properties. VICI keeps its aggregate rent whole by finding a new tenant for the same square footage.
Payne also pointed to Highfield’s regional focus as a reason to expect strong results at Century Mile and Century Downs — which is the other half of a landlord’s job. Choosing a counterparty is a credit decision. Swapping a large multi-jurisdiction operator for a Calgary-based specialist changes the risk profile of that CAD$10.7 million, even if the figure on the page is identical.
What it tells you about gaming property investment
A few things worth keeping in mind whenever you see a casino REIT headline:
- Rent neutrality is a feature, not an accident. Reallocating rent between leases lets a REIT support an operator’s restructuring without taking an income hit. Read “total rent unchanged” as the whole point of the structure.
- Racing property still attracts institutional money. Horse racing handle has not been the growth story of the past decade, yet these venues sit on large, zoned, licence-linked land in a regulated market. That scarcity is what a REIT is buying, more than the racing itself.
- Nothing closes without the regulator. The transactions are expected to complete in the fourth quarter or the first quarter of 2027, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals. In gaming, a change of operator means suitability review; in Alberta, gaming and racing sit under provincial oversight, and paperwork moves at its own pace.
- Landlord and operator have different exposures. If you follow the sector as an investor, VICI’s risk is tenant credit and lease term. Highfield’s risk is everything that happens on the property.
Does any of this reach the person at the machine?
Mostly indirectly, and slowly. Signage and branding may change, refurbishment budgets may loosen, food and beverage may improve, and the venue’s identity can shift as a regional operator puts its own stamp on it. What does not change is the arithmetic on the floor. Ownership structures, lease escalators and capex covenants do not touch the house edge on a slot bank or the takeout on a racing pool. A game with 96% RTP returns about 96% of wagers over the very long run whoever holds the title deed, and every session remains an independent roll of the dice.
So the honest reading of the VICI Properties racetracks agreement is that it is a financing story dressed in racing silks: a balance sheet cleaned up, a landlord’s income protected, a new operator with a modernisation plan and a contractual obligation to spend. If you gamble at venues like these, set a deposit or spend limit before you go and treat the entertainment as the product, not the returns. The people collecting the rent certainly do.
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