Come year’s end, Mohegan Sun will be free of its management agreement with Trading Cove Associates. Liberty comes at a dear price: $900 million, or 5% of 15 years’ revenue. “If not for the Great Recession’s effect on Mohegan Sun’s revenues – growing competition in the Northeast is another culprit – the payments would likely have cleared the billion-dollar mark,” reports The Day. The Mohegans could have been rid of Trading Cove 11 years ago — at the price of 40% of gaming net revenues. As it is, tribal council chairman Kevin Brown doesn’t care to revisit the past: “I don’t feel it appropriate to comment on a decision made nearly 15 years ago,” he told a reporter.
Former tribal chairman Roland Harris, architect of the relinquishment agreement stood by his 1999 actions and said he’d do it all over again. Harris may have stunted his career in tribal politics, thought: Every time he’s stood for a tribal council seat, he’s lost. Mohegan Sun, Harris argues, could have been just as stunted in its efforts to compete with Foxwoods Resort Casino had Trading Cove not been brought aboard. Now the money can be used to pay down debt and improve Mohegan Sun’s credit rating.
“I don’t even like to call them ‘relinquishment payments.’ It sounds anti-business,” Harris added. “I’d call them a cost of self-determination … If it wasn’t for what happened in 2008, you wouldn’t be writing this story.”
Currently, Mohegan Sun, Trading Cove and Foxwoods are all butting heads in the Catskills region of New York State. Trading Cove’s Len Wolman is behind a project in Thompson, as is Mohegan Sun (each with different partners), whilst Foxwoods has pitched its tent in Liberty, a few miles distant.
* In Arkansas, lawmakers got smart and unanimously voted to allow Oaklawn Park to operate a Web site of its own. Previously, Oaklawn could only sit on the sidelines in frustration as punters bet on Oaklawn races and 
simulcasts … at out-of-state Web sites. Oaklawn’s new site is generating $170,000 a day in action, which is a 100% on the bupkes the track was making off the ‘Net before. Arkansas players are estimate to wager $30 million a year online and Oaklawn now has a $9 million slice of that, with the state taking a 1% “rake” of online, simulcast and live-racing revenue, and the former split 50/50 with horsemen
The track has partnered with Churchill Downs‘ subsidiary, TwinSpires.com, to implement software that Oaklawn officials say is state of the art in age verification and geolocation. “Oaklawn couldn’t come into the market with a product that was inferior. It had to be as good as the national brands,” says a track exec.
There is some evidence that convenient, online wagering is cannibalizing some of the action down at the track. Simulcast betting has fallen 16% and wagering on live races is off 7%. However, thanks to Internet bettors, overall track income has risen 4%. Congratulations to Arkansas for doing the right thing.
* In upstate New York, Seneca Gaming Corp. is running into a barrage of robocalls as it contemplates expansion. And who is so concerned with the welfare of New Yorkers? The operators of Finger Lakes Gaming & Racetrack and Batavia Race Track, that’s who. Former Seneca Gaming CEO E. Brian Hansberry is heading up the astroturf No More Casinos and Finger Lakes owner Delaware North Cos. Gaming & Entertainment.
He claims that working for the tribe was his road-to-Damascus moment: “My diverse experience in the gaming industry, including time at Seneca Gaming, has made it clear to me that the competitive advantage enjoyed by Seneca Gaming is unfair, not only to Finger Lakes Gaming and Batavia Downs, but to the entire hospitality industry in Rochester and throughout western New York.” A spokesman for Seneca Gaming called Hansberry’s efforts an “anti-Indian campaign,” sending No More Casinos into high, Victorian dudgeon. The tribe, it huffed, “has a long and sad history of trying to play the ‘race card’ whenever their plans meet meritorious community opposition.”
The faux grass roots movement has spent roughly heavily to date, stirring up anti-Seneca fervor — not without success. The town board of Henrietta voted unanimously to rebuff the Senecas. “No More Casinos seems to have left few avenues unexplored to get its message out,’ writes one reporter, noting that $1.1 million in lobbying expenses have gone to a Florida-based firm.
Ex-Rochester mayor William A. Johnson Jr. is the face of the anti-casino group, uttering dire warnings of job losses, higher crime and increased taxes. Considering that Monroe County voted against casino expansion in the recent referendum, Johnson is playing to a sympathetic audience. Johnson may be sincere but, when No More Casinos’ literature uses verbiage about how a tribal casino “will likely force long-standing community businesses like Batavia Downs and Finger Lakes Raceway out of business,” if you listen closely you can hear the race card being played — and I don’t mean horse races.
