Exclusive: State Senator Joseph Addabbo says New York’s 3 Casino Licenses Likely Delayed Until January

The downstate casino licenses for New York City and the surrounding area may not be issued until January, SportsBoom has been told by State Senator Joseph Addabbo.

Also, legal wagering on individual player awards such as Super Bowl MVP, the Cy Young Award, Heisman Trophy and NBA Rookie of the Year will not be available until the same timeframe, and only if they meet legislative approval and are signed into the by Governor Kathy Hochul.

License Delays

Those two developments came Monday as eight entities continue to compete for the three coveted licenses to bring brick-and-mortar casino gambling to America’s most populated city and its surrounding suburbs, home to roughly 20 million people.

"My colleagues (in the state legislature) are sometimes apprehensive, but I mention that New Yorkers are already making these types of prop bets in neighbouring states such as New Jersey and Connecticut,” Addabbo told SportsBoom.com, in a telephone interview from his district office in Queens, N.Y. 

“Also, the governor needs to know that New York is viewed nationally as an expanding U.S. market. We are currently losing $1 billion per year, and we need the revenue,” Addabbo added. 

Current plans call for up to three casino licenses to be issued by Dec. 31 of this year, but the state legislature does not reconvene until January, so as a practical matter this legislation, NY State Senate Bill 2025/2616, may not move out of the committee state and into the enacted stage until the budget setting process begins in January. 

It would amend New York’s current sports gambling laws, which banned moving on individual players awards because of a belief that those votes can be compromised because the ballots are being cast by humans.

That thinking has changed.

“Even though we are doing $2.6 million in revenue, we’re never done. New Jersey does prop bets, we don’t. But New Yorkers are savvy, and they will back to going out of state for these types of wagers,” Addabbo said. 

“We can never rest. We have to keep up with other states."

“There is some thought that the gaming commission can do it unilaterally, but I want to codify it."

For a long time, the frontrunners for two of the casino licenses have been Empire City Casino in Yonkers, N.Y. and Resorts World New York at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. 

Both are now fully functioning “racinos” with video lottery terminals, and both have already met all environmental and community support approval processes. 

That is not so elsewhere. In Times Square, for instance, there remains strong opposition to putting a casino into a neighborhood that is close to so many Broadway theaters. The parties bidding for that license include: Roc Nation, SL Green, and Caesar’s Place. 

Developer Larry Silverstein and Rush Street Gaming want to build a casino in the Hudson Yards area of the West Side of the Manhattan, less than 10 blocks southwest of Times Square, and the East Side of Manhattan just south of the United Nations is the home of a proposed “Freedom Plaza” casino on a 5-acre park site. 

That bid is coming from the Soloviev Group and Mohegan. New York Mets owner Steve Cohen and Seminole Hark Rock Entertainment want their own casino next to Citi Field in the footprint of the old Shea Stadium, and Bally’s has taken over operation of the old Trump Links at the foot of the Whitestone Bridge in the Bronx. Also, Brooklyn is in the battle, too, with a partnership of Thor Equities, Saratoga Casino Holdings and the Chickasaw Nation proposing a project called “The Coney” near the site of the annual July 4 Nathan’s hot dog eating contest.

Community Advisory Committees are currently reviewing each of the proposals (a two-thirds vote is needed to advance) and are holding public meetings and hearings. The winning applicants are supposed to be announced December 1, but those types of deadlines have gone unfulfilled in the past.

Market Effects

It remains to be seen how this possible delay, along with the addition of individual player prop bets to legalized sportsbooks, could impact the stock prices of the companies that are competing.

At the close of trading Tuesday, here were the prices of the companies that will be impacted:

• Genting (Resorts World): Stock is not being traded on OTC market pending earning report Tuesday.
• MGM Resorts (Yonkers Raceway): Closed at 38.20 USD, down one penny. Its 52-week high was 41.99 USD on October 29 of last year.
• Rush Street Gaming: Closed at 21 USD on the New York stock exchange, but up more than 89 percent from where it was in January of 2014.
• Caesars: Closed where it opened, $26.75, after being down for most of the day Monday.
• Hard Rock Entertainment: Closed at $64.84, down 1 ½ percent, on the New York Stock Exchange.
• Bally’s: Closed down 17 pennies at 9.74 USD, down more than 50 percent from its 52-week high of 20 USD reached on Jan. 4 of this year.
• Thor Equities: Closed at $10.77, down nearly a dollar on the New York Stock Exchange.
• S.L. Green: Off 1.13 percent at $56.15 on the New York Stock Exchange.