Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at the financial promises of Las Vegas-style casinos in New York City. We’ll also get a preview of the trial of a former aide to two New York governors who is accused of working for China.
If state regulators stick to their timetable, they will issue as many as three licenses for Las Vegas-style casinos in New York City by the end of the year. There are three contenders, and all have made billion-dollar claims about how much revenue they would bring in. Meeting those projections — or coming close — would make any of them the highest-grossing commercial casino outside Nevada or Mississippi. Can they turn those promises into reality? I talked about that with Matthew Haag, who is covering the casino licensing process. You looked at other places where casinos have opened, and you talked to experts who said the economic reality was less like a big economic boost than a reshuffling. How so? Economists who study casinos and other types of investments talk about something called the multiplier effect. Here’s a hypothetical scenario: Let’s say that a new airplane assembly plant is built and hires 1,000 workers. But 2,000 more jobs are created in the area, after you count the companies that supply parts that set up shop nearby — and the coffee shops and stores and maybe even hotels that open because the factory provides a customer base. So with 3,000 total jobs, the multiplier is three. For casinos in cities, the multiplier is less than one, according to a new paper that explored the economic impact of gambling houses in Philadelphia, Chicago and other urban areas. For every job created at a casino, the broader neighborhood actually lost more than one job. The upshot is that casinos soak up consumer spending and employees from the neighborhood but don’t spur greater economic activity. So are the revenue projections from the companies that have applied for the casino licenses unrealistic? Operators have historically overstated their revenue projections. The three casino companies vying for licenses in New York City said they could make at least $1 billion a year. Two bidders, the Hard Rock in Queens and Resorts World near Kennedy Airport, have said they could bring in about $4 billion a year or more, which would make them among the top grossing casinos outside Nevada. (All the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip collectively made $8.7 billion in 2024, according to the American Gaming Association.) A casino in the city would undoubtedly make a lot of money, given the population. If history is any guide, though, casinos in New York City would see a spike in revenues in the first year as they attract people who are intrigued by the new resorts but do not return again. What has happened in other cities where casinos have been licensed? The results are mixed. One of the most recent urban casinos, the Encore Boston Harbor in a Boston suburb, opened in 2019 and is now one of the top-grossing gambling houses in the country. Its operator, Wynn Resorts, estimated before it opened that it could bring in $800 million a year. It has never met that goal, and gambling revenue has decreased the past three years. In Illinois, a new Bally’s Chicago casino generated about half of the gambling revenue that the city had projected. What about tourism? Don’t casinos draw people from all over, and doesn’t that boost the local economy? The casino bidders say their resorts will become major tourist attractions, but every economist I interviewed said that would be highly unlikely. The first casinos, in Las Vegas and later in Atlantic City, brought in tourists because of the novelty effect — you had to travel to Nevada or New Jersey to gamble. But today, casinos are in 43 states. There are many other reasons and attractions for people to visit New York, economists say, and the city already has a “racino” at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens — a casino with video slot machines and electronic table games — run by Resorts World. It generates about $1 billion in gambling revenue. How many of the people gambling in casinos in New York City will be New Yorkers? A majority. If the new casinos operate like most others in the country, they will attract most of their customers from nearby neighborhoods, and their most lucrative customers would be repeaters. A recent study in Massachusetts found that just 10 percent of gamblers are responsible for nearly 90 percent of the spending at the casinos there, a ratio that is consistent elsewhere. The three bidders for the licenses in New York City redacted detailed information about potential customer bases. Bally’s Bronx did say that it expected only a small percentage of its customers to be from the Bronx. A previous bidder, Freedom Plaza in Manhattan, made its information public, showing that it would draw customers who lived within two hours of the city. What about other forms of gambling, like online sports betting? How is that affecting the appetite for brick-and-mortar casinos? Each of the three operators would build a sports book at its casino. But a majority of sports betting today is online and on mobile phones. New York State is a juggernaut in the industry, with nearly $24 billion in bets wagered on sporting events in the last fiscal year. Experts I interviewed said they were monitoring whether sports betting had hurt casinos but that it was too early to know. There’s also a generational difference here: Sports bettors tend to be much younger than the gamblers who go to casinos. WEATHER Expect a partly sunny and windy day with a high near 50 degrees. Tonight will be partly cloudy and the temperature will dip to the low 40s. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Nov. 27 (Thanksgiving.) The latest New York news
Politics
Former Albany aide goes on trial, accusing of helping China
Opening arguments are expected to begin today in the trial of a former aide to two New York governors on charges of working as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government. Federal prosecutors say a raid at the home of the former aide, Linda Sun, turned up luxuries like a Rolex watch and a Ferrari Roma, a sports car with a base price of more than $254,000 — the product of payoffs for pressing the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda covertly when she worked as an adviser and aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul and her predecessor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo. When Sun was indicted last year, the prosecutors said she had deleted references to Taiwan from New York State communications and had blocked Taiwanese officials from meeting with state leaders. Defense lawyers asserted in pretrial filings that prosecutors had built the case around a novel interpretation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which says that anyone who works on behalf of a foreign government must register with the Justice Department. METROPOLITAN DIARY 86th to 51st
Dear Diary: I scoot into a seat on the 6 train, orchestrated by two women long, unadorned fingers They take turns. One beats her chest One brings her hands together The subway screeches halt wise. I almost miss my stop. — Elise Chadwick Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Lauren Hard and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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