N.Y.C. Casino Bids Promise Billions in Growth. Will the Reality Match the Hype?
Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash
New York City is ready to roll the dice on a new kind of gamble. Resorts World, Hard Rock, and Bally’s are all competing for the chance to build a casino in the city, each coming with their own billion-dollar projects packed with amazing promises, from thousands of jobs to a boost in tax revenues. It definitely sounds impressive on paper, but people who are watching the industry closely are starting to ask if those numbers will actually hold up once all of the excitement fades.
Gamblers, however, haven’t exactly been waiting while everyone’s debating on who gets to open its first major casino in the city. While online casinos remain restricted in New York, people have found ways to access offshore platforms like casinos that are not on Gamstop that allow players from all over to play their favorite games. These sites, licensed in places like Malta or Curacao, draw in users with their offers of faster payouts, generous bonuses, as well as flexible limits; perks that state-regulated platforms can’t always match.
This is a great reminder that gambling doesn’t stop just because the city is still in talks. The game has already moved online, efficiently and quietly, while the physical casino race drags on. That’s what makes this casino push both ambitious and uncertain. Resorts World says its expanded site near JFK could bring in as much as $4 billion each year. Hard Rock is pitching $3.9 billion in Queens, along with 6,000 permanent jobs. Bally’s has its own $4 billion plan for the Bronx, promising hundreds of millions in annual taxes. It sounds like a sure thing, but history hasn’t been kind to those kinds of forecasts.
Take Boston and Chicago. Both cities launched major casino projects with high hopes and billion-dollar forecasts. A few years in, the outcomes look much more modest. The Encore Boston Harbor, for instance, was expected to make $800 million annually but hasn’t hit that figure in six years. In Chicago, Bally’s casino brought in $125 million, which is only about half of what the city had estimated for 2024. Often, revenues plateau, tax collections slide, and the much-hyped “boost” turns into just another steady business in the local economy.
New York’s own experience backs that up. When voters approved the state’s first commercial casinos back in 2013, it was meant to spread opportunity upstate. Yet a decade later, most of those casinos are struggling to meet their own goals. Resorts World Catskills, which was once the crown jewel, recently needed financial help from Sullivan County just to stay afloat.
Others have seen steady declines as well, especially as the initial excitement wore off. It’s a pattern that cities can’t seem to shake: the first few years are strong, but sustaining those gains becomes harder once the novelty disappears.
That’s the same concern that experts now have as New York prepares to hand out up to three new licenses, each lasting anywhere from 10 to 30 years. It’s a long commitment, and over that time, casinos will have to adjust to an aging customer base and a gambling world that’s quickly moving in new directions.
For example, recent figures show that New Yorkers wagered roughly $2.6 billion on sports through mobile apps in October alone, a new national record that just shows how quickly attention and spending have shifted online.
This trend adds pressure to these billion-dollar casino projects, as they now have to compete for a share of an audience that is no longer bound by location or habit. For a place like New York City, the hope is the same. People are hoping that the promises made by these billion-dollar projects today turn into something lasting and not just another headline that will fade once the excitement does.
