Casinos' slipping fortunes
Monday, July 21, 2014
It seems like eons ago that Bob DeLeo was extolling his casino bill (insisting on calling it a “jobs bill”), Deval Patrick was waxing rhapsodic about something called a “destination resort casino” (which was said to be wholly different than a plain vanilla casino), and everyone was giddy about all the money the state would be raking in without asking taxpayers to fork over involuntarily (through taxes) a nickel more of their hard-earned money.
"Hyperbole was always part of the pitch," writes Joan Vennochi in yesterday's Globe. "But today, the rosiest projections seem ever more fanciful. Just as Massachusetts starts to bank on the money, the glitter is wearing off the industry."
The Bay State's market timing when it comes to casinos looks like it couldn't be worse. Venocchi ticks off the dismal developments, including the closure of four of Atlantic City's 12 casinos, woes for gambling spots in West Virginia and Delaware, and, perhaps most ominously, "double-digit declines" in slots revenues at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.
Last month, even before the latest Atlantic City closure announcements, the CEO of Foxwoods told The Wall Street Journal, "There is dramatic oversupply in the industry right now."
Against that backdrop of market saturation, gambling foe David D'Alessandro tells Vennochi that, far from generating lots of new revenue, casinos here will just end up "stealing from our own lottery."
None of this seems to have fully caught up with the casino debate in Massachusetts, which will get a full airing with a ballot question this fall asking voters whether they want to repeal the state's casino law. But it is inevitable that the tough times for casinos will eventually move front and center into the debate, and that certainly won't help the odds of the casino companies looking to land here and their local backers.
"Despite growing evidence to the contrary, Massachusetts still thinks of casinos as a growth industry," writes Vennochi. "Maybe they were 20 years ago. But today, starting up the casino industry in Massachusetts feels like starting up Wang Laboratories in the age of Google."
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