Cuomo giveth, Cuomo taketh away. After dropping hints of expansive sports betting in New York State, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) unveiled a proposal that was considerably less than ‘george.’ There will be one ‘skin’ and it will be answerable to the state lottery. Only the four, struggling, upstate casinos will be eligible to participate and the tax rate may be as high as 50%. The only silver lining for the industry is that the winner of the license competition will be the only game in town, enabling them to spend little or nothing or promotion. Due to its extensive ties within the Empire State, DraftKings has to be considered the early favorite. The state’s three tribal casinos are on the outside looking in and that’s bound to be a source of contention. Explaining his parsimony, Cuomo said, “I’m not here to make the casinos a lot of money. I’m here to raise funds for the state,” to the tune of $500 million in tax receipts a year.
The Rio is at least as large as the former Taj to Hard Rock AC, which was a $500 Million renovation. The Taj/HR exterior was in good shape; from what I remember about the Rio is that the exterior needs major work, plus the interior. Looks like a losing proposition in a downward market.
New York and California are shining examples of how not to do sports betting… Either you open up sports betting to operators who can pass muster on criminality and integrity, or you give out monopolies… California can look at legal marijuana if it wants to see an example of what happens when you set the rules up to benefit billionaires and the well connected, the black market flourishes. Go to a cannabis store and look at the flowers, they want $80 for an eighth of an ounce of top shelf, the government is disgustingly greedy and only fosters the black market that legalization was supposed to destroy. Cuomo is a fool, and California would be stupid to reward tribes with a monopoly on sports betting. And sorry Derek Stevens, you are nuts to try and paint a rosy picture of gambling and Las Vegas visitation when four thousand Americans are dying everyday of an out of control highly contagious virus, while the vaccine “rollout” is the biggest government failure of my 60 plus years of life. You opened up a fabulous place Derek, can’t wait to visit it myself, but tell the truth about tourism, lies benefit nobody…