What if they built a megaresort and nobody came?

Resorts World Catskills made it into the New York Times and not in a good way. A feature story focused on the $1.2 billion megaresort’s financial difficulties, caused in part by nine-figure loans. Empire Resorts says the casino does not have “any reasonable prospect for becoming financially self-sustaining in the future.” Genting Group maintains that Resorts World Catskills is doing better, but only very incrementally: It lost $37 million in the first quarter, $36 million in 2Q19. Things are so bad that Empire petitioned New York regulators to allow it to curtail the slot floor. Lawmakers also quietly slipped a deal for Empire Resorts to build a slot parlor in Orange County, a New York City suburb.

“None of this is a shock,” says gaming analyst Harold L. Vogel. He’s referring to the addition of Resorts World Catskills and three other casinos to a market that had five tribal casinos and six racinos. “We did the casinos in upstate New York, not because it was the greatest industry in the world, but because upstate New York’s economy’s been suffering for decades,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), committing truth on talk radio. He might have also cited the usurious tax rates the new casinos pay: 37%-45% on slots, 10% on table games. Casino companies were only too eager to pay those rates as the price of getting into the Empire State and are now whingeing for tax cuts. As Rush Street Gaming CEO Greg Carlin put it, “we didn’t appreciate the impact that different slot rates would have on our business.” (How do such people get to be CEOs?)

Carlin added, significantly, that Rivers Casino Schenectady has been a success from “a New York perspective” but “it has not been a success from an ownership or an investment standpoint.” And what’s the point of a casino that does jack as an investment? MGM Springfield is also blamed for siphoning off business. Depending on whether Cuomo still demands a constitutional amendment, solons are looking at mobile sports wagering as a method of fiscal pushback. All too predictably, legislators and casino owners alike are pushing to rescind the 2023 date for opening casinos in the Five Boroughs. Obvious winners in that scenario would be Yonkers Raceway and Resorts World New York, which could add table games and be full-service casinos straightaway. Will it work economically? “When you’re in a big city, there are so many other things to do that casinos are an afterthought,” says industry analyst Alan Woinski. In other words, don’t expect a Columbus Circle casino.

* Have you heard of Tom O’Connell? Don’t worry, you will. He’s pitching a horse track and slot parlor for Wareham, in the casino-less southeastern (or Region C) part of Massachusetts. O’Connell’s project can’t be achieved without some help from Beacon Hill. He wants to spend $300 million when the statutory minimum is $500 million. Also, having two slots-only racinos would (pardon the pun) run a cart and horses through ex-Gov. DeVal Patrick‘s casino framework, which only provided for one racino: Penn National Gaming‘s Plainridge Park. Even if the Mashpee Wampanoag seem down and out now that Genting Group left them at the altar, Neil Bluhm has not given up on his plan for a casino in Brockton and intends to petition state regulators shortly. Besides, if the commonwealth makes an exception for O’Connell, it potentially opens the floodgates of casino development. The Wareham pitch looks like a long shot but Bluhm has been rebuffed once before and Congress could still carve out a Carcieri v. Salazar exemption for the Mashpee Wamps.

* In illogical response to Chinese hegemony over its gaming industry, Cambodia is banning Internet gambling. “Some foreign criminals have taken refuge in the form of this gambling to cheat and extort money from victims, domestic and abroad, which affect the security, public order and social order,” reasoned the government.

* It almost never snows in Las Vegas, unless you’re a patron of the Caesars Palace spa or some of the other high-end health hangouts. Irony alert: “Suites [at Vdara] are like private luxury apartments, with many affording superb views of the desert mountains and the city’s neon lights.” That’s because they were intended to be private luxury apartments back when MGM Resorts International built them.

* Steve Wynn used to bore our ears off with his espousal of a vegan lifestyle. I wonder if he’s joined the ranks of vegan dropouts, which seem to be growing.