Cards on the table: Fear of East Coast casino overbuilding might be overblown

A crashing wave of casino resort development up and down the East Coast cannibalized the finite pool of customer revenue that exists in the U.S. — at least, that was the thinking only a few years ago. The reality today is quite different, with several of these new resorts seeing their best financial performance to date. 

The nearly $65 million in gross gaming 카지노사이트 주소 revenue Encore Boston Harbor — Wynn Resorts’ $2.6 billion casino just north of downtown Boston — collected in March was the resort’s largest amount earned in any month since opening, according to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. While the sprawling property’s revenue haul scaled back slightly to a little more than $60 million in June, it’s still considerably more than it was for several months in the property’s opening year in 2019, when the resort often brought in revenue below the $50 million mark. 

Further south in Maryland, the Old Line State’s casino industry — which is dominated by MGM National Harbor outside Washington, D.C., and Live! Casino Hotel Maryland in the Baltimore suburbs — reported its best year ever in 2021. Sign up for our daily newsletter to get more TPG news delivered to your inbox every morning.

Nationally, the $14.31 billion in U.S. gambling revenue recorded in the first three months of this year was the strongest start to any year in reporting history. It was surpassed only by the $14.35 billion reported in the final three months of 2021, according to the American Gaming Association.

Oddly enough, the stock price does not reflect the positive trend. Shares of MGM Resorts International were down about 28% year-to-date on Friday afternoon. Shares of Wynn Resorts are also down about 28%, while Caesar Entertainment is also down more than 50%.

"According to Wall Street, shoes will soon fall off and die in a recession. It's never what Wall Street thinks it is." "Local casinos 카지노사이트 추천 tend to perform better than most people expect during recessions. The number of times the industry counts is just ridiculous and always comes back," said Alan Woinsky, CEO of Gaming USA Corporation, a casino consulting and publishing company.

Too excited about something? Given the risk of casino saturation, the East Coast is not out of the danger zone. Earlier this year, the New York State Legislature passed legislation to build three full-service casino resorts in New York City.

But experts say business strategies based on local gamblers, rather than more ambitious proposals (such as funding ultra-high net worth foreign gamblers to travel to new gaming destinations), are more likely in modern finance. said to be helpful in activating There is no better example than Harbor Encore in Boston.

To say her $2.6 billion resort north of Boston missed its opening date is like saying the Titanic's maiden voyage was a little disappointing. 

Wynn Resorts founder Steve Wynn was one of several high-profile men accused of widespread sexual harassment during the early months of the #MeToo era (allegations he firmly denies to date) and while the Massachusetts casino project was still in development. 

Wynn eventually stepped down from his eponymous company, but Encore Boston Harbor — at the time known as Wynn Boston Harbor — still faced scrutiny from Massachusetts gaming regulators over how many remaining executives knew about their former boss’ behavior. 

Wynn Resorts still opened the resort after changing the property’s name and paying fines, but monthly revenue numbers fell short of what was necessary to hit the company’s initial estimates of $800 million in gaming revenue for the resort’s first full year of operation. 

The pandemic also soured Wynn Resorts’ ambitious plan to make the casino an East Coast hub for ultra-high-end international gamblers. 에볼루션게이밍 Travel restrictions in place in certain parts of Asia, including China, mean that plan still hasn’t been realized. Encore Boston Harbor has seen a succession of leadership roles (Robert DeSalvio left Encore a few months after it opened in 2019, and his successor, Brian Gullbrants, left in the summer of 2021). It seems third time is the charm, as the resort - which focuses almost entirely on regional play rather than its home international plan - sits in the community.

“Did we make any mistakes at the opening? There's no doubt about it, and it happens with every opening, especially when you're the first and only one in a city as big, independent and unique as Boston,” said Jenny Holaday, who has since served as president of the resort. last August. "There was no other model to look at and say, 'Oh, you know, how's that other casino in Boston?' We have invented a whole new category, a five-star national casino."

Is regional orientatin the key to success? Unlike destination casinos similar to the giant resorts in Las Vegas (think Bellagio or Resorts World Las Vegas) that attract players from all over the US and international destinations, local casinos located in suburban or rural markets usually attract people. Customers in the not-too-distant surrounding area.

It's hard to categorize Encore Boston Harbor into one, as the Forbes Travel Guide's recent five-star awards for hotels and spas don't fit exactly within the framework of local casinos. However, due to continued travel restrictions in countries such as China, Wynn Resorts is unable to offer the casino to overseas travelers as originally planned.

But the hostel plans to bring more Canadian players to cities like Toronto in the near future, Holaday said.

“You make assumptions. You draw on your experience. You understand what the regional competition is like, and then you do your best,” she added. “So, we definitely learned a lot of lessons really quickly.”

Changes at Encore include everything from swapping out the property’s buffet for a sports bar to pursuing future expansion like an events space and restaurant across the street from the main resort. 

Further development plans independent of Wynn Resorts — like a long-rumored and long-awaited soccer stadium for the New England Revolution MLS franchise — are also under consideration around the resort, potentially turning it into only one part of a broader, regional district of housing, sports and entertainment. 

But there’s a reason casino 카지노사이트 companies should listen to Holaday’s “super-regional” take on Encore Boston Harbor. Think of it as an ultimate lesson in “Keep it simple.”

Even Las Vegas casinos spent the better part of 2021 behaving more like regional casinos than their more recent turn as omni-entertainment mega-resorts offering everything from pop diva residencies to prize fights to five-star restaurants. Travel and lingering pandemic restrictions meant the main event last year was the casino floor. 

Palms Casino Resort, once a fixture on reality television and a hub for celebrities, relaunched earlier this year targeting more local and regional guests than ever before. 

The broader regional gaming draw paid off: The $13.4 billion in gaming revenue Nevada reported last year was the highest on record and bested 2019 levels by more than 11%. 

“Las Vegas up until the pandemic was just spinning its wheels, trying to attract more non-gaming, and it didn’t work,” Woinski said. Margins were at an all-time low and they could barely make ends meet. Now they are much higher than they think, because again they are all gamblers. "Regional mentality is much better than destination mentality."