Question of the Day - 28 December 2023

Only slightly, we'd say.

Leaders of the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes had been trepidatious that MGM’s Springfield venue would cut deeply into their business. They feared that players from Hartford, one of their main feeder markets, would drive north to Springfield (as MGM hoped) and not south to their megamegaresorts.

As early as January 2019 when MGM Springfield was up and running and Encore Boston Harbor was delayed, the impact was looking not nearly as bad as feared. Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, the two Connecticut casinos you're asking about, had initially forecast a drop in slot revenue (the only numbers reported to the state) of 25 percent. However, after MGM’s debut, that was reduced to nine percent.

Said Chris McClure of the Connecticut Office of Policy & Management to the Boston Globe, “With MGM on board, we're still experiencing a decline, just not as severe as we thought.” In part that’s because MGM Springfield was a major revenue disappointment for its parent company. 

Built at a cost of $970 million (despite not being in a major metropolitan area), it was grossing $23 million per month, instead of the anticipated $35 million, numbers consistent to this day. Its biggest month was its first, in which it grossed $26 million. Now it averages $24 million.

Nor, the Globe reported, had Springfield put a dent in either Mohegan Sun’s or Foxwoods’ entertainment offerings. “Other than their splash at opening, they haven’t done a lot of entertainment. That might be contributing to their lack of performance on the gaming-revenue side,” commented then-Foxwoods CEO Rodney Butler. (MGM responded with prepared platitudes.) The biggest names to appear in Springfield, as of last January, have been Bruno Mars, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler.

MGM wasn’t alone in wishful thinking concerning its Springfield property. Massachusetts Gaming Commissioner Enrique Zuniga opined, “Something of this size and scope is likely to attract people from farther away.”

However, as gaming consultant Alan Woinski stated to New England Public Media, competition from Schenectady, Boston, and Rhode Island was why the MGM model wasn’t working.

Earlier this year, MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle expressed some regret to the Globe about the pricey casino. “We thought there would be more business here than ultimately materialized,” shrugging it off with, “It is what it is.” The casino has been slim-fasted from 2,500 slots to 1,600 and 93 table games to 50. Instead of a promised 3,000 jobs (possibly including construction), MGM Springfield is staffed by 1,500. Other promises to the community have not been kept.

The biggest casualty of MGM Springfield was an attempted countermove by the tribes. They hoped to collaborate on an off-reservation casino, Tribal Winds, in East Windsor, just north of Hartford and 13 miles south of Springfield. This highly irregular initiative was met with political opposition in Connecticut and by litigation from MGM Resorts. 

Tribal Winds broke no ground, in part due to the difficulty of creating it and in larger part due to the absence of a true Springfield threat. The amount of revenue to be recaptured hardly justified the trouble and expense of forcing a big casino into little East Windsor.

Except for Encore Boston Harbor, no casino has been introduced into Foxwoods’ or Mohegan Sun’s feeder markets that has posed a serious menace. Slot parlors in Lincoln and Tiverton, Rhode Island, are closer but aren’t major players in the region. Slots-only racino Plainridge Park, in Massachusetts, does only about $12 million a month.