Rick Springfield, the Grammy-winning rocker still best known for “Jessie's Girl,” is set to play Sunland Park Casino's outdoor Turf Club at 8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 18. The show marks the first concert in the casino's relaunch of ticketed live entertainment at the venue located at 1200 Futurity Dr.
General admission tickets for the show run $27.50, while premium Turf Club seats cost $70 and include table service, bars, and a limited restaurant menu, according to KTSM 9 News. Sunland Park Casino has noted that guests who purchase Turf Club table seats may end up sharing a table with other concertgoers, and the venue describes the evening as a one-of-a-kind night under the September sky. Tickets are available on the casino's website, which also offers more details on the show.
A Rock Legend With Deep Roots Beyond One Hit
Springfield is widely described as a rock legend and a Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, and while “Jessie's Girl” remains his signature song, his catalog runs much deeper. The single hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 1, 1981 — the same day MTV launched on cable television — and held the top spot for two weeks after a 19-week climb following its March 1981 release, according to Wikipedia. The song earned him the Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance at the 24th Annual Grammy Awards in 1982, when he performed it live on the broadcast.
Springfield followed that breakthrough with four more U.S. Top 10 hits between 1981 and 1984 — “I've Done Everything for You,” “Don't Talk to Strangers,” “Affair of the Heart,” and “Love Somebody” — building a run that ultimately produced 16 Top 40 entries on the Hot 100 during the 1980s. He rose to fame that same era playing Dr. Noah Drake on ABC's daytime soap “General Hospital,” juggling daily filming with recording sessions until he left the regular cast in 1983; the television exposure helped drive sales of his 1981 album Working Class Dog, according to Soap Opera Digest.
He's hardly resting on that legacy. Springfield released his 22nd studio album, Automatic, in 2023 — a 20-song, guitar-driven collection dedicated to his late sound engineer Matty Spindel that includes the tribute track “She Walks With the Angels.” He's also stayed busy on the road, co-headlining dates on Sammy Hagar's Best of All Worlds tour and performing “I've Done Everything for You,” a song Hagar wrote for him, a run of shows Hoodline covered earlier this summer.
New Owners Bet on Live Music at the Turf Club
The Sept. 18 show lands as Sunland Park Racetrack & Casino settles into new ownership. Strategic Gaming Management completed a $301 million acquisition of the property in October 2025, then sold the real estate assets to Gaming and Leisure Properties for $183.75 million in a sale-leaseback arrangement, per PR Newswire's release on the deal. The facility had been owned for nearly 25 years by the family of late racehorse owner Stan Fulton before the sale.
Sunland Park's grounds span 157 acres along Futurity Drive in Doña Ana County, with a 25,000-square-foot casino floor housing 738 slot machines and 12 electronic table games, sitting near the Texas border and drawing from both El Paso and southern New Mexico. The track first opened in October 1959 as a Thoroughbred horse racing venue before slot machines arrived in 1999, after New Mexico lawmakers authorized casino gaming at race tracks — a change that pushed daily racing purses from around $35,000 in the early 1990s to nearly $250,000, according to background compiled from GlobeNewswire's coverage of the ownership transition.
The relaunch also fits a broader push for more live music in the region. A 2024 initiative proposed “Independent Nation,” a 1,500-capacity venue at 420 Sunland Park Drive meant to fill what regional organizers described as a gap between small bars and 5,000-seat arenas, according to 95.5 KLAQ. Whether Sunland Park Casino's new management plans to book additional major touring acts as part of this concert series remains to be seen.
Springfield's Sunland Park date follows other recent headlining appearances, including a run at Carrollton's Festival at the Switchyard last September. For Borderland fans, the outdoor Turf Club offers a smaller, more intimate setting than an arena tour stop — a first test of how the venue's new owners handle a ticketed crowd under the open September sky.
