At no time do you ever hear the 'experts' comment on the COSTS.
Pokey process is costing Massachusetts casino dollars
as time goes by
Here's a look at the states that have legalized gaming and the length of time it took from the passing of legislation to the opening of the state's first facility:
Same year
Florida, Nevada, Rhode Island, South Dakota, West Virginia.
One to two years
Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, Oklahoma.
Two to three years
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico.
Three to four years
Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania
Four years or more
Massachusetts (projected)
Source: American Gaming Association
[The timeline fails to consider the amount of corruption involved in the process or the glaring errors and omissions.]
As Massachusetts makes its very deliberate way toward opening its three planned casinos, other states are quickly responding, aiming to snatch customers from the nascent Bay State market.
While the state gaming commission has promised it will get the casinos open as soon as possible, its timelines show licenses being issued in February 2014, meaning it's unlikely that any dice would be rolled or cards dealt until 2016, at the earliest.
The longer it takes, the longer the state will have to wait for significant gaming revenue and employment.
The longer it takes, the less developers will be likely to invest in what is becoming a saturated market.
The longer it takes, the more gambling money leaves the state. The UMass Dartmouth Center for Policy Analysis estimated that Bay State residents spent more than $900 million at other New England gaming facilities last year.
"Even if nothing happens in any other state, it's a billion dollars a year every year we wait," said Center Director Clyde Barrow. [Clyde's been counting license plates again! Clyde's figures don't represent $$$ in the state's coffers. They represent $$$ going to the Gambling Industry.]
But things are happening in other states.
Rhode Island's Twin River casino, a short hop from many Massachusetts locations, will be adding table games to its slot machines sometime next year. And in New Hampshire, where lawmakers have been flirting with gaming for years, there are new rumblings that a casino could be approved and operating at Rockingham Park, just north of the Massachusetts border, by the end of 2013.
Industry experts said Massachusetts already had left money on the table by taking so long to approve gaming legislation and now stands to let even more get away.
"Massachusetts blew the opportunity to get significant casino development by delaying legalization for so long," said Roger Gros, publisher of Global Gaming Business Magazine. "If officials had been able to pass a bill several years prior to last year's measure, they would have been able to get multibillion-dollar properties built. Now, anything over $800 million will be a stretch, unless there is a superior location (to Suffolk Downs) in the Boston area that wins the bidding there.
"And while you want to be deliberate in choosing the regulations, locations and licensees, the process in the state is way too long," Gros said. "To think that the first casino probably won't open until 2017 is ludicrous."
"Clearly, the longer this process takes, Massachusetts will lose any first-mover advantage that it might have had as well as making casino firms a bit hesitant about dealing with Massachusetts politics," said Richard McGowan, a Boston College economist who studies gaming.
Elaine Driscoll, spokesman for the Gaming Commission, said, "There is a sense of urgency" and "we do want to accelerate the process whenever possible, but some elements of it are time-consuming."
The process, while already slow, hasn't even taken into account the potential licensing of a commercial casino in Southeastern Massachusetts if the Mashpee Wampanoag fail to win the federal approvals required to open an Indian casino in Taunton. That casino likely would be the last of the state's three to open and "the last to open will be at a disadvantage, particularly if it's in the southeast region, where Rhode Island and Connecticut will always be big competitors," Gros said.
While the gaming commission says it's being deliberate, Barrow said, "It's just endless bureaucracy.
It's just process for the sake of process sometimes.
"I understand they're making the case that they're being cautious and careful, but the reality is that has been done 20 times or more in other states," he said. "I don't know why you have to be so cautious when you have multiple regulatory structures to choose from. We know which ones work. To me, it's just a cut-and-paste job.
"The reality is that nationally the average time from the legislation passing to the day the first racetrack casino opens has been nine months and for casinos it's been two years," Barrow said.
"We're now double that."
Barrow's Center has done some consulting for the New Hampshire Legislature, and "our estimate was that 70 to 80 percent of their gambling revenues would come from Massachusetts. You're talking $500 to $600 million more a year leaving the state."
And Bay Staters shouldn't be sure that money will return once the Massachusetts casinos open.
"State lines really don't tell people where to shop," said gaming expert William Thompson, a professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. "People buy when something is close and when something is convenient. So if there's a casino, people will cross the state lines for the convenience. The citizens won't care one bit about who gets the tax money and they really won't care about who gets the profits. They're thinking about the gambling experience."
Barrow agreed.
"We know it has to do with convenience so you can draw a line right across the map between Suffolk Downs and Rockingham and we know that everybody on the north side of that goes north," he said.
This phenomenon, called "cannibalistic" by Andrew Zarnett, who focuses on gaming, lodging and leisure as managing director at Deutsche Bank Securities, has played out as gaming has quickly expanded along the Atlantic Coast.
"Over the course of the last five years, the Atlantic Coast market has seen the number of slot machines grow at a rapid rate," Zarnett wrote. "Many of these new entrants have been able to carve out successful markets. But as is often the case, they have taken share from markets that long ago were thought to be monopolies. In some cases, this new supply has impacted existing properties located in their states. More often, this new supply has cannibalized casinos in neighboring states."
Winners in this slot machine arms race have been Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York, while the big losers have been Connecticut, where revenues at the two Indian casinos have declined for five straight years, and Atlantic City, where revenues have fallen from $5.3 billion in 2006 to $3.3 billion in 2011.
"Cannibalistic supply continues to be added to the market," Zarnett said, and "we expect gaming positions to now grow 17 percent over next three to four years.
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