One thing you have to hand New York. Unlike Massachusetts where the pretense of Predatory Gambling is economic development and low wage job creation, at least in New York, they're content to merely suck the neighborhood dry instead of sound fiscal policy.
You don't hear New Yorkers protesting that there are 3 Slot Machines to each employee. Nor do you hear comments about the 'Table Games' being all electronic - no employees!
Studies have determined that each Slot Machine permanently removes + 1 job from the local economy. That makes sense when you consider the daily discretionary income each machine takes in. In the case of Aqueduct, it would seem that if each Slot Machin is sucking more than twice the amount of a Las Vegas Slot Machine from the local economy, New York is ignoring major local issues.
"The average income from an electronic slot machine is more than $370 a day, compared with $169 for slots on the Strip in Las Vegas."
Queens, N.Y., slot parlor alters casino landscape
By CHARLES V. BAGLI New York Times News Service
Publication: The Day
Published 10/25/2012
AP Photo
Resorts World Casino New York City opened last fall with 4,525 electronic slot machines and 475 electronic table games.
New York - A casino that opened a year ago at the fading Aqueduct horse racing track in Queens has emerged as the country's highest-grossing slot parlor, helping to reshape the gambling landscape in the Northeast as patrons chose less opulent, more local casinos instead of traditional gambling meccas in Atlantic City and Connecticut.
The casino, Resorts World Casino New York City, generated nearly $630 million in revenue over the last 12 months from electronic slot machines, more than the slots at any of the 12 casinos in Atlantic City or at Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. The average income from an electronic slot machine is more than $370 a day, compared with $169 for slots on the Strip in Las Vegas.
The success of the casino, the only one in the five boroughs of New York, suggests that no matter how luxurious the accommodations or exciting the entertainment, nothing appeals more to gamblers than a casino that is nearby. More than 5.6 million people live within 10 miles - a short subway ride or car trip - of the casino, which expects to see its 10 millionth customer by the end of October. At the same time, the runaway success of the casino is also expected to have an impact on how the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo moves ahead with plans to approve more, even larger casinos around the state.
"Convenience and location are the driving factors today," said William R. Eadington, director of the University of Nevada's Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming. "If you put a casino in a high-density population like Queens, you'll do well."
And others will not. Casino revenues in Atlantic City have dropped 36 percent, from a high of $5.2 billion in 2006 to $3.3 billion last year. Revenues are also down at Connecticut casinos. Last month, Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, the world's largest casino, announced it would lay off 328 more workers, blaming the casino at Aqueduct and a weak economy.
"I used to go to Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods on the fast ferry," said Ralph Barbaro, 77, a retired salesman, as he played a slot machine at Resorts World. "This is very convenient. It takes me 20, 25 minutes to get here from my home on Long Island."
Genting New York, a subsidiary of the largest gambling company in England and Southeast Asia, opened the casino last fall, with 4,525 electronic slot machines and 475 electronic table games.
Genting transformed the aging grandstand at Aqueduct, where racing seldom drew a crowd, into a palace packed with clanging machines, restaurants and gamblers. There are now nine racetrack slot parlors and five tribal casinos in New York.
New York's slot parlors pay the highest tax rate in the nation, a total of 60 percent or more, compared with less than 10 percent in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. By law, the bulk of the money, 44 percent or $3.3 billion since 2006, goes to education.
There are similar success stories in other states. Gamblers no longer have to get on a plane or endure a three-hour bus ride to play slot machines and blackjack now that casinos and slot parlors have proliferated across Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. More casinos are on their way in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maine.
"This trend is really tough on traditional hotel-casinos with 1,000-room hotels," Eadington said. "They have trouble filling the rooms."
With the proliferation of casinos and slot parlors, the Connecticut and Atlantic City establishments are not the only ones feeling the pinch of competition. Empire City Casino in Yonkers, until recently the most profitable of New York slot parlors, says it has seen a 15 percent drop in business since Resorts World opened.
State officials and gambling executives say they believe that major resort-casinos, especially one in Manhattan, would be an enormous boon to the economy. Casino proponents say that operators would pay as much as $1 billion for a license in New York City. And some experts contend that resort-casinos employ seven for every $1 million gambled, while slot parlors average only three jobs for the same sum.
But the success of the casino at Aqueduct could also be used as an argument against future casinos, because it appears to be stealing some customers from others to succeed. A full-scale casino in New York City or on Long Island would attract huge crowds, experts say, and almost certainly put a big dent in profits at local slot parlors.
"You may be successful with a commercial casino in New York City, but there's going to be collateral damage," said Alan Woinski, president of Gaming USA, which publishes analyses of the gambling industry. "Everybody thinks casinos print money. Those days are over. The market is becoming saturated."
State officials contend, however, that gambling is still growing in New York, where revenues have jumped to $1.4 billion in the last fiscal year from $875.2 million in 2007. The Aqueduct and Yonkers casinos generated over $1.1 billion in revenue in the past year, more than double what Empire City did a year earlier. Officials say they want to balance economic development and tax revenue while avoiding pitfalls of increased competition and tax rate changes.
But Genting, MGM Resorts, Las Vegas Sands and the other gambling companies that want to build full-scale casinos in New York also say they want the tax rate slashed substantially in order to justify building a $2 billion resort-casino.
With a drop in revenue in some slot parlors and a lower tax rate at the full casino, the state could well see a decline in direct revenues to education from the nearly $1 billion a year it gets from the slot parlors.
http://www.theday.com/article/20121025/BIZ03/310259502/1044
Resorts World anniversary celebration: record revenue in first year
Posted: Thursday, October 25, 2012
Queens Chronicle
It wasn’t the Oscars, but it sure felt like it.
Hundreds of people — elected officials, members of the media, business leaders, civic leaders — drove up to the front entrance of Resorts World Casino New York City and stepped out into the abnormally frigid October air.
As the cold morning turned into afternoon, the big red ribbon was cut and a new industry arrived in Queens.
That was one year ago. This week the casino will celebrate its first anniversary in business at Aqueduct Racetrack.
Resorts World’s first gaming floor, the Times Square Casino — along with its buffet and food court — opened for business one year ago this Friday. Its Fifth Avenue Casino and RW Prime Steakhouse and Genting Palace restaurant opened two months later, as did the Central Park events floor.
In the year since the casino opened its doors, its presence in the neighborhood has yielded a wide array of reactions; from excitement about a new entertainment venue so close to home, to anger and concern over what the casino could bring to the neighborhood in terms of traffic and crime. However, many of those concerns have been unfounded.
Although traffic tied up surrounding roadways during the casino’s first couple of weekends in business, that problem subsided over time. On the crime issue, Deputy Inspector Thomas Pascale, commanding officer of the 106th Precinct, which includesJune that despite a small rise in crime in the precinct’s communities, the casino has not contributed to it and police have worked well with the casino’s security on issues at the site since its opening. [Did you ever notice when folks talk about CRIME, the comments are vague? What does 'small rise' mean?]
Resorts World won the bragging rights of being the most profitable casino in the country in the last year, outranking Atlantic City and Connecticut casinos.
In its first year, the casino raked in over $653 million in total revenue, with $435 million going to the state in taxes and roughly $279 million of that going to education. Genting has paid over $815 million in taxes to the state, including the $350 million upfront payment it made last year as part of the company’s contract with the Divison of the Lottery to build and operate the casino and other payments. [Those are revenues removed from the community.]
The casino also expects to serve its 10 millionth customer by the end of the month.
Resorts World spokesman Stefan Friedman said more than 1,750 people are employed at the casino, nearly 1,000 more than the company had originally estimated. Though the casino has been criticized for not meeting its goal of hiring 70 percent of its workforce from Queens — the estimated percentage from Queens is around 60 percent — Resorts World said that in terms of raw numbers, it has hired far more Queens residents than it had planned.
The casino plans to celebrate its first anniversary today, Oct. 25, with a guest appearance by Cat Greenleaf, host of NBC’s Talk Stoop, and a performance from the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe, as well as a performance to unveil Resorts World Casino’s official first year anthem.
At the event, the casino will present a $500,000 check to be split among 37 different local organizations — part of the agreement Genting has with the state to donate 1 percent of its earnings to the community.
Here is the list of groups receiving checks from the new foundation, “Genting Gives,” on Thursday.
South Queens Boys & Girls Club; Lincoln Center Local Queens Library Partnership; Queens YMCA: Flushing/ Jamaica; City Meals on Wheels; Met Council; Million Trees NYC / Restoration Project Queens; The Museum of Chinese in America; United Black Men of Queens and Vicinity; Sanctuary for Families; InMotion; Youth and Tennis; City Harvest; Louis Armstrong House Museum / Queens College; New York Chinese Cultural Center; Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund; The Cooke Center for Learning and Development; Rockaway Development & Revitalization Corp.; SUNY Educational Oppurtuinty Center - Queens; Garden of Hope; Indo-China Sino-American Community Center 9; Queens Community House Queens Center for Gay Seniors; School Sisters of Notre Dame Educational Center; Greater Whitestone Taxpayers Community Center, Inc.; The Salah M. Hassanein Variety Boys and Girls Club; Advocates for Children; Queens Council on the Arts; Chinese American Planning Council; A Better Jamaica; Dominico American Society of Queens; Extreme Kids & Crew; New York Families of Autistic Children; Sikh Coalition; Anna House/ Belmont Child Care Association; Dress for Success; Youth America Inc. and River Fund.
http://www.qchron.com/editions/queenswide/resorts-world-anniversary-celebration-record-revenue-in-first-year/article_bb32b65f-7327-55fb-9571-3a8b034b9df2.html
The casino, Resorts World Casino New York City, generated nearly $630 million in revenue over the last 12 months from electronic slot machines, more than the slots at any of the 12 casinos in Atlantic City or at Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. The average income from an electronic slot machine is more than $370 a day, compared with $169 for slots on the Strip in Las Vegas.
The success of the casino, the only one in the five boroughs of New York, suggests that no matter how luxurious the accommodations or exciting the entertainment, nothing appeals more to gamblers than a casino that is nearby. More than 5.6 million people live within 10 miles - a short subway ride or car trip - of the casino, which expects to see its 10 millionth customer by the end of October. At the same time, the runaway success of the casino is also expected to have an impact on how the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo moves ahead with plans to approve more, even larger casinos around the state.
"Convenience and location are the driving factors today," said William R. Eadington, director of the University of Nevada's Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming. "If you put a casino in a high-density population like Queens, you'll do well."
And others will not. Casino revenues in Atlantic City have dropped 36 percent, from a high of $5.2 billion in 2006 to $3.3 billion last year. Revenues are also down at Connecticut casinos. Last month, Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, the world's largest casino, announced it would lay off 328 more workers, blaming the casino at Aqueduct and a weak economy.
"I used to go to Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods on the fast ferry," said Ralph Barbaro, 77, a retired salesman, as he played a slot machine at Resorts World. "This is very convenient. It takes me 20, 25 minutes to get here from my home on Long Island."
Genting New York, a subsidiary of the largest gambling company in England and Southeast Asia, opened the casino last fall, with 4,525 electronic slot machines and 475 electronic table games.
Genting transformed the aging grandstand at Aqueduct, where racing seldom drew a crowd, into a palace packed with clanging machines, restaurants and gamblers. There are now nine racetrack slot parlors and five tribal casinos in New York.
New York's slot parlors pay the highest tax rate in the nation, a total of 60 percent or more, compared with less than 10 percent in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. By law, the bulk of the money, 44 percent or $3.3 billion since 2006, goes to education.
There are similar success stories in other states. Gamblers no longer have to get on a plane or endure a three-hour bus ride to play slot machines and blackjack now that casinos and slot parlors have proliferated across Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. More casinos are on their way in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maine.
"This trend is really tough on traditional hotel-casinos with 1,000-room hotels," Eadington said. "They have trouble filling the rooms."
With the proliferation of casinos and slot parlors, the Connecticut and Atlantic City establishments are not the only ones feeling the pinch of competition. Empire City Casino in Yonkers, until recently the most profitable of New York slot parlors, says it has seen a 15 percent drop in business since Resorts World opened.
State officials and gambling executives say they believe that major resort-casinos, especially one in Manhattan, would be an enormous boon to the economy. Casino proponents say that operators would pay as much as $1 billion for a license in New York City. And some experts contend that resort-casinos employ seven for every $1 million gambled, while slot parlors average only three jobs for the same sum.
But the success of the casino at Aqueduct could also be used as an argument against future casinos, because it appears to be stealing some customers from others to succeed. A full-scale casino in New York City or on Long Island would attract huge crowds, experts say, and almost certainly put a big dent in profits at local slot parlors.
"You may be successful with a commercial casino in New York City, but there's going to be collateral damage," said Alan Woinski, president of Gaming USA, which publishes analyses of the gambling industry. "Everybody thinks casinos print money. Those days are over. The market is becoming saturated."
State officials contend, however, that gambling is still growing in New York, where revenues have jumped to $1.4 billion in the last fiscal year from $875.2 million in 2007. The Aqueduct and Yonkers casinos generated over $1.1 billion in revenue in the past year, more than double what Empire City did a year earlier. Officials say they want to balance economic development and tax revenue while avoiding pitfalls of increased competition and tax rate changes.
But Genting, MGM Resorts, Las Vegas Sands and the other gambling companies that want to build full-scale casinos in New York also say they want the tax rate slashed substantially in order to justify building a $2 billion resort-casino.
With a drop in revenue in some slot parlors and a lower tax rate at the full casino, the state could well see a decline in direct revenues to education from the nearly $1 billion a year it gets from the slot parlors.
http://www.theday.com/article/20121025/BIZ03/310259502/1044
Resorts World anniversary celebration: record revenue in first year
Resorts World’s first year: 1,750 jobs, $635 million in revenue
Resorts World anniversary celebration: record revenue in first year 1
Resorts World Casino New York City is celebrating its first anniversary operating at Aqueduct Racetrack this week.Posted: Thursday, October 25, 2012
Queens Chronicle
It wasn’t the Oscars, but it sure felt like it.
Hundreds of people — elected officials, members of the media, business leaders, civic leaders — drove up to the front entrance of Resorts World Casino New York City and stepped out into the abnormally frigid October air.
As the cold morning turned into afternoon, the big red ribbon was cut and a new industry arrived in Queens.
That was one year ago. This week the casino will celebrate its first anniversary in business at Aqueduct Racetrack.
Resorts World’s first gaming floor, the Times Square Casino — along with its buffet and food court — opened for business one year ago this Friday. Its Fifth Avenue Casino and RW Prime Steakhouse and Genting Palace restaurant opened two months later, as did the Central Park events floor.
In the year since the casino opened its doors, its presence in the neighborhood has yielded a wide array of reactions; from excitement about a new entertainment venue so close to home, to anger and concern over what the casino could bring to the neighborhood in terms of traffic and crime. However, many of those concerns have been unfounded.
Although traffic tied up surrounding roadways during the casino’s first couple of weekends in business, that problem subsided over time. On the crime issue, Deputy Inspector Thomas Pascale, commanding officer of the 106th Precinct, which includesJune that despite a small rise in crime in the precinct’s communities, the casino has not contributed to it and police have worked well with the casino’s security on issues at the site since its opening. [Did you ever notice when folks talk about CRIME, the comments are vague? What does 'small rise' mean?]
Resorts World won the bragging rights of being the most profitable casino in the country in the last year, outranking Atlantic City and Connecticut casinos.
In its first year, the casino raked in over $653 million in total revenue, with $435 million going to the state in taxes and roughly $279 million of that going to education. Genting has paid over $815 million in taxes to the state, including the $350 million upfront payment it made last year as part of the company’s contract with the Divison of the Lottery to build and operate the casino and other payments. [Those are revenues removed from the community.]
The casino also expects to serve its 10 millionth customer by the end of the month.
Resorts World spokesman Stefan Friedman said more than 1,750 people are employed at the casino, nearly 1,000 more than the company had originally estimated. Though the casino has been criticized for not meeting its goal of hiring 70 percent of its workforce from Queens — the estimated percentage from Queens is around 60 percent — Resorts World said that in terms of raw numbers, it has hired far more Queens residents than it had planned.
The casino plans to celebrate its first anniversary today, Oct. 25, with a guest appearance by Cat Greenleaf, host of NBC’s Talk Stoop, and a performance from the China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe, as well as a performance to unveil Resorts World Casino’s official first year anthem.
At the event, the casino will present a $500,000 check to be split among 37 different local organizations — part of the agreement Genting has with the state to donate 1 percent of its earnings to the community.
Here is the list of groups receiving checks from the new foundation, “Genting Gives,” on Thursday.
South Queens Boys & Girls Club; Lincoln Center Local Queens Library Partnership; Queens YMCA: Flushing/ Jamaica; City Meals on Wheels; Met Council; Million Trees NYC / Restoration Project Queens; The Museum of Chinese in America; United Black Men of Queens and Vicinity; Sanctuary for Families; InMotion; Youth and Tennis; City Harvest; Louis Armstrong House Museum / Queens College; New York Chinese Cultural Center; Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund; The Cooke Center for Learning and Development; Rockaway Development & Revitalization Corp.; SUNY Educational Oppurtuinty Center - Queens; Garden of Hope; Indo-China Sino-American Community Center 9; Queens Community House Queens Center for Gay Seniors; School Sisters of Notre Dame Educational Center; Greater Whitestone Taxpayers Community Center, Inc.; The Salah M. Hassanein Variety Boys and Girls Club; Advocates for Children; Queens Council on the Arts; Chinese American Planning Council; A Better Jamaica; Dominico American Society of Queens; Extreme Kids & Crew; New York Families of Autistic Children; Sikh Coalition; Anna House/ Belmont Child Care Association; Dress for Success; Youth America Inc. and River Fund.
http://www.qchron.com/editions/queenswide/resorts-world-anniversary-celebration-record-revenue-in-first-year/article_bb32b65f-7327-55fb-9571-3a8b034b9df2.html
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