"we took a wrong turn in this country"

From the NYT on Foxwoods' implosion --

The Foxwoods Resort Casino has 7,600 slot machines. Slot revenue fell to $709 million in the 2008-9 fiscal year, from $820 million in 2004-5.

It was inevitable that with banks acting like casinos, casinos would act like banks, placing bets they couldn’t quite cover. At Foxwoods, it was the decision in 2006 to take on a boatload of debt to add the $700 million MGM Grand resort and casino to cement Foxwoods’ transition from bigger to biggest.

Some 700 employees were laid off a year ago. Even with the expansion, slot revenue fell by 13.5 percent to $709 million in the 2008-9 fiscal year from a high of $820 million in 2004-5. In November, the tribe announced it was paying only $14 million on a $21 million debt payment. With $2 billion in debt, it’s not getting easier any time soon.

Of the Gambling Arms Race --

The spread of gambling across the Northeast is leaving too many casinos chasing too few gamblers. And there’s more competition sure to come.

From a casino patron --

“You know and I know that every inch of this place is a shell game to get people’s money,” he said. “I’d rather that we invest in something that provides real jobs and productivity, not more casinos. You just get the feeling that somewhere along the way, we took a wrong turn in this country.”


With the battered economy and the saturated casino business, it’s going to be a long, long time before someone builds something as big as Foxwoods again.