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You got it. Why it is important to plan your holiday shopping event NOW.

I find it somewhat ironic that at a time when the newly formed Gaming Commission is ramping up for the not too distant time when they will receive applications for the three resort casinos and one slot parlor, that a few of the largest players in the industry have expressed no interest in pursuing a license, or have faded away.  Massachusetts native and gaming icon Sheldon Adelson recently said that three licenses would “water down” the attraction of his Las Vegas Sands Corp. in pursuing a license here, and he has no interest.  MGM Resorts unceremoniously pulled out of their Brimfield, MA bid, reportedly over the time it would take to gain approval for a direct access to the proposed site via the MA Pike (though they claim to be looking elsewhere in Western MA), and Steve Wynn has apparently pulled out of the Foxboro scene where his overtures to the town have been rebuked.  So where does that leave us?  Back where we started, with the Suffolk Downs/Caesar’s Entertainment proposal the front runner for the Eastern license, the Mashpee Wampanoag’s the front runner for the South Eastern zone license in Taunton (with a recent offer of $33 million to the town up front and $13 million guaranteed annually), and though still a potentially more competitive zone, the Mohegan Sun Palmer project the front runner in the West….unless the big boys are lying in the weeds.

Lost in all of the discussions about how much a prospective casino developer will invest in a MA casino ($500 million+), or what the license itself will cost ($85 million+) is the money spent chasing the license, which was revealed recently.  In an article by Steve LeBlanc of the Associated Press, it states that $11.4 million has been spent in lobbying efforts in the last 5 years in MA.  Far and away leading that list are the owners of Suffolk Downs, having spent $2.8 million making sure they are at the front of the bus.  The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, who appears to have no competition at the moment for the Southeastern MA license, spent nearly a million.  For MGM Resorts, the second largest gaming company in the world and a proponent of a Brimfield casino, only a mere $60,000 has been spent to date.  One thing is for certain; that number will skyrocket as the actual gaming commission is formed and official applications are filed.

After dropping our daughter off at JFK Airport in Queens last Thursday, my wife and I made our way over to the new $830 million Resorts World Casino at Aqueduct Racetrack, about a 15 minute drive with the right traffic conditions to the East side of Manhattan. As is typical with most racinos, a glitzy Las Vegas style building is attached to the aged and storied grandstands that front the original race track. Developer Genting New York did a nice job with this facility, and they have certainly taken a bite out of their Yonkers rival Empire City at Yonkers Raceway. Whether the pie gets bigger allowing both to flourish remains to be seen. One thing seems obvious to this writer, however. Electronic table games don’t cut it for the traditional table games player that still makes up a significant percentage of the gaming population. Surrounded by states with table games in PA, CT, and even in New York’s own Indian gaming facilities, legislation that allows them to compete in this area is sure to be considered.

If you ask someone to name the states with the largest annual gaming revenue most people in the know (even non-gamblers) would say “Nevada” and “New Jersey”.  Not so fast; make way for….Pennsylvania.  Hard to believe a state known for places like the Poconos and Amish Country has overtaken New Jersey with greater than 3 billion in revenue from its 10 operating casinos.  An 11^th will come on board as Valley Forge opens in the spring, and 3 other awarded licenses have yet to announce plans.  But with Atlantic City’s most anticipated opening since The Borgata opened – the long awaited Revel on the Northern most end of the Boardwalk – perhaps New Jersey can win back that #2 spot in 2013.

At 11:00AM on January 12^th in the historic Hitchcock Academy, located in the sleepy town of Brimfield, MA, David Callahan announced that MGM Resorts International is his partner in a push for the lone Western, MA casino license.  A well known local, and owner of Palmer Paving Company, his family has hundreds of acres of land that abut the Massachusetts Turnpike in the extreme Northwestern area of town.  With Mr. Callahan to trumpet the news was Jim Murren, the CEO of MGM Resorts, and Bill Hornbuckle, the #2 in command and Chief Marketing Officer.  A number of other team members joined them.  So you can add MGM to the mix that already includes the longtime presence of Mohegan Sun in neighboring Palmer, as well as Ameristar and Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, to those that have expressed interest in operating a resort casino in this part of the state.   This will be a long and arduous process, and the casino licensing commission is not yet formed, so stay tuned!

Here we go again, time to debate the pros and cons of expanded gaming in Massachusetts. Proponents and opponents will meet in the Beacon Hill Gardiner Auditorium in Boston this afternoon, just as they did on March 18th, 2008, to debate this issue. I was in the packed audience for the 2008 debate. There were many good and thoughtful arguments made on both sides of the debate, but it was all for not as the fix was in; Speaker Sal Dimassi had wrangled the votes to see that the proposed article died in committee, having never seen the light of day for a vote. Fast forward 18 months, 540+ days of brutal economic news and local cuts, and now the polls are falling all over themselves to get something passed. In all likelihood, we'll see a bill that will allow slot machines at our existing racing venues, or full blown casinos on a federally recognized Mashpee Wampanoag tract of land, or perhaps even another location, such as Palmer or Milford, that would welcome the Mohegan Suns and Penn Gamings of the casino world with open arms. The only problem is that the can't miss gaming ship may have already sailed. Just building a resort casino is no guarantee of it's success nowadays. Virtually every gaming entity in the Northeast, sans Empire City at Yonkers Raceway, is significantly down year over year since 2007. And while a casino license could have been expected to fetch as much as 500 million dollars up front a few years back, now municipalities will settle for local infrastructure improvements, and hopefully a nice piece of the taxes that will be imposed on the entity.