It’s a new dawn for the three casino winners in New York City, and the same could be said for those they will impact.
Approximately six weeks ago, the downstate New York casino process concluded with all three finalists — Bally’s Bronx, Resorts World NYC and Metropolitan Park — receiving full commercial licences.
After several years of intense competition, the dust has settled, but now several more years of hard work lie ahead. Resorts World plans a $5.5 billion expansion and renovation of its existing Queens facility; Metropolitan Park is an $8 billion mixed-use complex adjacent to Citi Field, also in Queens; and Bally’s will build a $4 billion integrated resort at its Bronx golf course.
Resorts World is planning to launch the first phase of its expansion by July of this year, and the other two have projected single-phase openings in 2030.
The three will face varying tax rates, with each having pitched their own during the bid process. Resorts World will pay the highest tax — 56% on slots and 30% on tables — with Bally’s in second at 30% and 10% and Metropolitan Park third at 25% and 10%.
While the winners are beginning their development work, a range of other storylines are beginning to emerge as the broader region reacts to the impending competition. Some are within the state, like digital expansion, prediction markets and the outlying Seneca Nation compact renewal, and some are external, such as New Jersey’s ever-present expansion efforts.
Up-front fees, long-term vision for Bally’s
The licensees have vastly different projects before them, but money is a big consideration for each. All three faced $500 million licence fees and each project’s estimated cost is well above the state’s $500 million investment minimum.
Bally’s, which is the most financially stretched of the three, faces an additional $115 million kicker as part of its site purchase agreement with the Trump Organization. At the same time, the company is embarking on a $1.19 billion Las Vegas Strip project and working to finish its $1.7 billion permanent Chicago casino. This glacier of costs is being thawed by a mix of proceeds from its megadeal with Intralot last summer and a new $1.1 billion loan from December.
Bally’s told iGB it has “every motivation” to get started in New York this year.
“We have an opportunity to actually shape the city I grew up in. It shaped me, so in some ways it’s giving back,” Bally’s Chair Soo Kim said at ICE Barcelona last month. “I’m a public school kid, so the notion that you can come to New York and many years later help define it or shape it in some way is pretty exciting.”
Resorts World, Met Park hard at work
Like Bally’s, Resorts World has had to do a fair bit of money manoeuvering to prepare for its expansion. The casino plans to outfit existing, unused space at its VLT facility in order to launch by the summertime. In doing so, its parent Genting has begun the process of selling its Resorts World Catskills property and consolidating its Malaysian subsidiary, both of which are ongoing.
Genting last month netted a $755 million loan to help finance the project’s immediate needs. Resorts World representatives did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Metropolitan Park and its casino partner Hard Rock have flown largely under the radar by contrast. The project is the most expensive of the field but is backed by billionaire New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, who has signed off on a slew of high-dollar acquisitions for his baseball team before the new season. If all goes to plan, Mets fans will soon have a sprawling casino complex to cheer about as well.
“Metropolitan Park’s approval is a win for Queens, the local community, and our neighbors who have supported us along the way,” project spokesperson Lauren Henrie told iGB. “Construction is expected to begin soon with the project to be completed in 2030. As it has been from the beginning, our top priority remains delivering what we promised for the local community, and being open and honest as we build the next great sports and entertainment destination for New York.”
With casinos in place, iGaming legalisation next?
The rise of perhaps the most exciting land-based gaming opportunity in the US coincides with heightened digital expansion efforts. Some lawmakers in New York, which is already home to the nation’s largest online sports betting market by handle and tax revenue, have pursued iGaming legalisation for years to no avail.
This lack of progress was due in part to a focus in Albany on finishing the casino licensing saga first. Now that that process is complete, officials can more easily turn their attention to hashing out the particulars of an iGaming framework.
State Senator Joe Addabbo, a leading proponent of gaming legislation, is trying for the fourth straight year to pass iGaming. He told iGB last month that “there is an opportunity to look at gaming on a large scale” in New York now that the casino process is done.
“For every year we don’t do it, we lose about a billion dollars to New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and the illegal market,” Addabbo said. “I start every session optimistic. But it’s a budget process. It can’t just be me. Every state that has it is because the governor wanted to do it or needed to do it, and I think that’s where we’re at.”
With that said, the potential arrival of iGaming was the chief reason why Las Vegas Sands withdrew its $7.6 billion Long Island bid last year. Sands said in a statement afterward that it “remains concerned about the impact of the potential legalisation of iGaming on the overall market opportunity and project returns”.
Growing prediction market presence
The threat of prediction markets to the traditional gambling industry is also growing steadily in light of their recent backing from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The controversial financial exchanges have expanded to offer sports contracts, theoretically cutting into both sports betting and casino gaming revenues. The two biggest prediction platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, are also headquartered in New York City.
New York is among the litany of states currently involved in lawsuits with Kalshi, and a class action suit against the platform has also been filed there. With ties to the Wall Street world, Kalshi is ramping up promotions in NYC, including a somewhat strange grocery store sponsoring event this week. Polymarket promptly responded with its own free grocery store campaign, dubbed “The Polymarket”.
On Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a surprise warning to New Yorkers about trading Super Bowl contracts on prediction markets this weekend. James said the contracts are “masquerading” as sports bets without proper consumer protections.
“Ahead of the Super Bowl, New Yorkers need to know the significant risks with unregulated prediction markets,” James said. “It’s crystal clear: So-called prediction markets do not have the same consumer protections as regulated platforms. I urge all New Yorkers to be cautious of these platforms to protect their money.”
New Jersey expansion finally in the cards?
In neighbouring New Jersey, the casino industry and its backers have been expecting increased competition ever since November 2013, when New York voters passed Proposal 1. That initative created the seven New York casino licences that have now all been issued. The first four went to the upstate region, more distant from the Garden State, which allowed some time before the more lucrative downstate process unfolded.
New Jersey stakeholders many times have proposed expanding casinos outside of Atlantic City to the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park racetracks to counter the imminent new competition. Those proposals have never gained traction, but the tenor of the conversation could change now that the downstate licences are cemented.
Two bills — Senate Concurrent Resolutions 31 and 66 — have been introduced in Trenton this year, though neither has made progress. Passage is a long road, with the bills needing either a supermajority vote from both chambers or simple majorities in consecutive sessions. Then any such measure must be approved by voters, who rejected an expansion initiative in 2016. Longtime governor and gaming supporter Phil Murphy was also termed out last month, with relative unknown Mikie Sherrill taking his place.
Gene Johnson, executive vice president of consultancy Victor Strategies, has done market analysis for both the New Jersey and New York casino markets, including for Bally’s Bronx last year. He told iGB that New York’s impact on New Jersey was inevitable, but the end result was not as bad as it could have been.
“All the destinations that were approved are east of Manhattan, the other side of the city from New Jersey,” Johnson said. “Will it have an impact on Atlantic City? Yes, but not as much as a Manhattan casino or even Coney Island could’ve had.”
Seneca compact still outstanding
The furious pace of the downstate casino process in 2025 overshadowed another state gaming saga that is still without a formal resolution. New York’s Seneca Nation of Indians, the state’s largest gaming tribe, has yet to finalise a new compact with the state after the previous agreement expired in December 2023.
The original compact, signed in 2002, grants the Senecas exclusive casino rights in western New York in exchange for profit sharing with the state. In the months before the expiration, the negotiating process went off the rails when a proposed renewal would have granted the tribe a new casino near Rochester, which was opposed by lawmakers. The two sides have operated under an automatically renewing temporary extension ever since, with little to no progress on a new framework.
State Senator George Borello implored Governor Kathy Hochul in November to finalise a renewal and end the limbo.
“The Seneca Nation has repeatedly proposed solutions and offered to meet in good faith. Albany, meanwhile, has failed to act, content to collect 25% of casino revenues under an automatic extension of the old compact,” Borello said in an op-ed for the Buffalo News.
The tribe’s business arm, Seneca Resorts and Casinos, did not respond to requests for comment.
Jess has covered the global gaming industry since 2022. A native of Reno, Nevada, he’d like to note that it’s Ne-va-da, not Ne-VAH-da.