After dropping our daughter off at JFK Airport in Queens last Thursday, my wife and I made our way over to the new $830 million Resorts World Casino at Aqueduct Racetrack, about a 15 minute drive with the right traffic conditions to the East side of Manhattan.  As is typical with most racinos, a glitzy Las Vegas style building is attached to the aged and storied grandstands that front the original race track.  Developer Genting New York did a nice job with this facility, and they have certainly taken a bite out of their Yonkers rival Empire City at Yonkers Raceway.  Whether the pie gets bigger allowing both to flourish remains to be seen.  One thing seems obvious to this writer, however.  Electronic table games don’t cut it for the traditional table games player that still makes up a significant percentage of the gaming population.  Surrounded by states with table games in PA, CT, and even in New York’s own Indian gaming facilities, legislation that allows them to compete in this area is sure to be considered.

If you ask someone to name the states with the largest annual gaming revenue most people in the know (even non-gamblers) would say “Nevada” and “New Jersey”.  Not so fast; make way for….Pennsylvania.  Hard to believe a state known for places like the Poconos and Amish Country has overtaken New Jersey with greater than 3 billion in revenue from its 10 operating casinos.  An 11^th will come on board as Valley Forge opens in the spring, and 3 other awarded licenses have yet to announce plans.  But with Atlantic City’s most anticipated opening since The Borgata opened – the long awaited Revel on the Northern most end of the Boardwalk – perhaps New Jersey can win back that #2 spot in 2013.

Pa. is now the country’s No. 2 state for casino revenue

With the announcement on 1/12 that MGM Resorts International is pursuing land in Brimfield, MA for its casino bid, it joins a significant list of top 10 gaming companies interested in setting up shop in the Bay State.  In fact, of the 7 known casino initiatives, all but the Mashpee Wampanoag’s have announced major industry partners as part of their proposal:

• Suffolk Downs  (East Boston) -  Caesars Entertainment
• Foxboro  -  Wynn Resorts
• Palmer  -  Mohegan Sun
• Brimfield  -  MGM Resorts Int.
• Holyoke  -   Hard Rock International
• Springfield  -  Ameristar Gaming

It has also been rumored that Penn Gaming, predominantly an operator of racetrack casinos (“racinos”) is interested in applying for the Western MA license in an undisclosed location.  The only noticeably absent national player not accounted for yet is Las Vegas Sands Corp., whose owner, Sheldon Adelson, is a major player in the industry AND a Massachusetts resident that grew up in Dorchester!

At 11:00AM on January 12^th in the historic Hitchcock Academy, located in the sleepy town of Brimfield, MA, David Callahan announced that MGM Resorts International is his partner in a push for the lone Western, MA casino license.  A well known local, and owner of Palmer Paving Company, his family has hundreds of acres of land that abut the Massachusetts Turnpike in the extreme Northwestern area of town.  With Mr. Callahan to trumpet the news was Jim Murren, the CEO of MGM Resorts, and Bill Hornbuckle, the #2 in command and Chief Marketing Officer.  A number of other team members joined them.  So you can add MGM to the mix that already includes the longtime presence of Mohegan Sun in neighboring Palmer, as well as Ameristar and Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, to those that have expressed interest in operating a resort casino in this part of the state.   This will be a long and arduous process, and the casino licensing commission is not yet formed, so stay tuned!

Here we go again, time to debate the pros and cons of expanded gaming in Massachusetts. Proponents and opponents will meet in the Beacon Hill Gardiner Auditorium in Boston this afternoon, just as they did on March 18th, 2008, to debate this issue. I was in the packed audience for the 2008 debate. There were many good and thoughtful arguments made on both sides of the debate, but it was all for not as the fix was in; Speaker Sal Dimassi had wrangled the votes to see that the proposed article died in committee, having never seen the light of day for a vote. Fast forward 18 months, 540+ days of brutal economic news and local cuts, and now the polls are falling all over themselves to get something passed. In all likelihood, we’ll see a bill that will allow slot machines at our existing racing venues, or full blown casinos on a federally recognized Mashpee Wampanoag tract of land, or perhaps even another location, such as Palmer or Milford, that would welcome the Mohegan Suns and Penn Gamings of the casino world with open arms. The only problem is that the can’t miss gaming ship may have already sailed. Just building a resort casino is no guarantee of it’s success nowadays. Virtually every gaming entity in the Northeast, sans Empire City at Yonkers Raceway, is significantly down year over year since 2007. And while a casino license could have been expected to fetch as much as 500 million dollars up front a few years back, now municipalities will settle for local infrastructure improvements, and hopefully a nice piece of the taxes that will be imposed on the entity.

Whatever happens in Massachusetts, it is likely to be three years or more by the time anyone is tossing dice or pushing a slot machine spin button. With 40% of our residents fueling the Foxwoods machine some say “if you build it they will come”, but will enough of them come to make them viable enterprises? And at what cost? Will a state with an inordinate amount of lottery revenue finally be over saturated with gambling options? Stay tuned.