Can Resorts World Hit Its Ambitious New York Revenue Target?

It is a dollar figure not lightly thrown around in any space. Even the mention of such a number causes a momentary pause to consider the source and its legitimacy.

One billion dollars.

It is difficult to wrap one’s head around that figure. Very few people have been in the same room with $1 billion in physical U.S. currency.

At the same time, it is an easy number to write down and ponder. The U.S. national budget (and national debt) are discussed in trillions of dollars. Most state budgets encompass billions of dollars. The gambling industry also has its aspects of billion-dollar moments, be they monthly sports betting handle or monthly casino revenue from Nevada.

All this prologue brings us to Resorts World, which is one of three applicants for one of as many as three downstate New York casino licenses. It has been a favorite since the formal process began in late June with eight submissions.

Resorts World turned heads when it projected $4 billion in gross gaming revenue as a “high” case scenario for 2031 in its executive summary to the New York State Gaming Commission’s Gaming Floor Location Board last month. It dropped jaws with a willingness to pay 56% taxes on slot revenue and 30% on table games.

If Resorts World can deliver those numbers, the state would receive $1.7 billion in tax revenue. The billion(s)-dollar question is: Can it deliver those numbers?

What does Resorts World currently have?

Resorts World currently averages more than 4,500 slot machines and electronic table games in use during the current fiscal year. In the most recently completed Fiscal Year 2024-25, which spans April 2024 through March 2025, it generated $692.4 million in net win.

That was up 2.9% from FY 2023-24 and 10.6% from FY 2019-20, which was the last year of full 12-month figures prior to the pandemic. Daily win per gaming position per day in FY 2024-25 was $395, up 7% year-over-year.

Resorts World has generated $406.5 million in net win for the first seven months of FY 2025-26. That is practically flat compared to last year, with a 0.1% decline. Daily win per gaming position is currently $419, tracking 6.1% higher and on pace to be the highest since FY 2015-16.

While revenue has grown compared to pre-pandemic numbers, wagering has yet to rebound to those levels. The $9.06 billion in credits played for 2024-25, while up 3.1% year-over-year, is down 19.6% from the $11.26 billion reported in 2019-20 when there were an additional 1,000 gaming positions utilized. The $5.19 billion thus far in FY 2025-26 is down 2.5% with revenue offset by the net win percentage increasing two-tenths of a percentage point to 7.8%.

Resorts World also pays an effective tax rate of 54% on its revenue broken out three ways: There’s 40% going to education and 10% going to what the NYSGC calls “Gaming Floor & Admin,” which are vendors and administrative costs to operate the gaming units. An additional 4% is dedicated to “capital award projects.”

What is Resorts World proposing?

Summed in one word, Resorts World’s casino-specific expansion plans are huge.

The floor will have 500,000 square feet housing 6,000 slots and 800 table games. Despite the 10,800 total gaming positions when equating six positions to one table game, Resorts is promoting personal space.

Plans call for 46 square feet of personal space per position — if one was to draw a 46-square foot box, it would have a length and width of roughly 81 inches. This space, however, will apply more to slot machines.

Resorts World also plans to have six private “gaming salons” that are “designed to achieve international standards of spaciousness and guest comfort at all levels of play, particularly for very high-end play.”

Physical dimensions and spatial amenities aside, the bigger question is how does Resorts World get from $692.4 million to $4 billion in revenue in the span of six-plus years? Let’s start with the most obvious component, the near-doubling of gaming positions plus the redistribution of the gaming positions into two verticals.

If Resorts World is issued a license, it would be more than doubling its amount of gaming positions. Using straightforward like-for-like math as a placeholder, the 10,800 positions would serve as a 2.25x multiplier on revenue. That would project to roughly $1.56 billion in net win based on FY 2024-25 totals.

But not all gaming positions are created equal. In its executive summary, Resorts World estimates it has 1,200 electronic table games (ETGs) that it equates to 200 table games based on six gaming positions per table. It would be quadrupling that total in addition to a 67% increase in slot positions.

The Asian influence

Resorts World made no secret about its interest in bringing Asian clientele to its expansive venue. It is, in fact, relying on a successful outreach to that community to generate a substantial portion of that $4 billion in annual revenue.

It did a great deal of “showing your work” in the executive summary presented to the GFLB, noting it expects 25% of its $1 billion in 2025 revenue to come from the Asian market. Resorts World reminded the agency of accurately projecting such revenue totals for nearly a decade of operations after it applied for the VLT license back in 2010.

The path to exponential revenue growth lies in baccarat, a wildly popular game in the Asian marketplace also prone to dramatic revenue fluctuations on a monthly basis. Going back to Nevada, the $52.2 million in baccarat win for September was down 44.3% compared to the previous year, but the Silver State’s three-month win of $284.3 million from July to September was up 16.6%.

Resorts World expects its venue to be on par with a Las Vegas-based casino, evidenced by its chosen revenue projection comparisons. It cited an overall Win Per Unit Table Per Day (WPU) of $4,232 across 2,411 tables; that number for baccarat, however, surges to $9,545 on only 429 tables.

Resorts World, through the study conducted by Spectrum Gaming, believes it can achieve a 50-50 split in table games and slot revenue as early as 2029. The study also noted that high-end venues that Resorts World wants to emulate — it cited Wynn Las Vegas — generate north of that 50-50 split.

Locally, it pointed out Wind Creek in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, generates 47% of its revenue from table games and has the most extensive outreach to the Asian marketplace in terms of busing to and from New York City. Considering these factors, plus location and Resorts’ track record, a 50-50 split by 2029 is achievable, especially when considering its first-phase expansion would open as early as next June.

Lastly, the $4 billion revenue projection for 2031 is based on Resorts World being the lone licensee. That figure drops to $3.3 billion if all three finalists obtain licenses, which is the “low” case scenario. While both figures are challenging goals, there is a sense of attainability given the transformational nature of what Resorts is proposing for its total integrated resort.

About those tax rates

Resorts World’s proposed tax rates are staggering when compared to finalists Metropolitan Park and Bally’s, even if they are somewhat in line to what it is paying now in terms of percentage.

Metropolitan Park, which would have Hard Rock as its casino operator, opted to keep the GFLB’s baseline rates of 25% for slots and 10% for table games. Bally’s redacted its proposed percentages in its redline executive summary, but it is believed to have proposed a 30% rate for slot winnings.

That may be why Resorts World has been reported to be planning to ask the GLFB to reconsider its submitted tax rates (though Resorts World has denied that report). In its redline executive summary, Resorts World notes that “if other Downstate Licensees open with lower tax rates on slots or tables, RWNYC’s tax rate should also be lowered because all proposed sites are close together and the same tax rate should apply to maintain a level playing field and avoid cannibalization.”

In-story images courtesy of Resorts World