Cards Shuffling, Wheels Spinning, Dice Tumbling On First NYC Casino Tables

The first legal table games in New York City are officially open for business. Resorts World New York City, the expansion in Queens of the Aqueduct Racetrack, held a press conference and ceremonial ribbon-cutting Tuesday morning, followed by New York-born hip-hip icon Nas conducting the first real-money toss of the dice at the craps table to get the games underway.

The ”N.Y. State of Mind” rapper, who was decked out in a tuxedo, was joined by Genting Chairman KT Lim and assorted local elected officials and community leaders as the first of New York’s three new gaming properties welcomed customers. Meghan Taylor, the property’s senior vice president of government and affairs and public relations, kicked off the event at 9:45 a.m.

Prior to the awarding of three downstate casino licenses last December, the Aqueduct racino property could only offer slots and horse wagering.

Six full commercial casinos operate in other parts of New York state — including Genting properties Resorts World Catskills and Resorts World Hudson Valley — to go along with the three additions in the NYC boroughs.

Hard Rock Metropolitan Park in Queens and a Bally’s casino in the Bronx are several years from opening because they have to be built from the ground up. Resorts World had a sizable head start because all it had to do was renovate its third floor to start offering table games.

At time of opening, New York City’s first commercial casino has more than 240 gaming tables, offering blackjack, craps, baccarat, and roulette, to go along with the property’s more than 2,500 slot machines.

The New York State Gaming Commission completed its testing last week and approved Resorts World to open its doors to the public.

New jobs, big revenue?

The expansion to a full casino has already been a substantial success with regard to job creation, as the facility employed roughly 950 workers prior to the casino licensing and now boasts 2,200 employees. Of the 1,250 new jobs, 950 are for dealing table games.

Genting projects the employee count will grow to 2,700 by this summer. The Resorts World Dealer School has trained and hired more than 400 local residents for the Queens property, with another 500 expected to complete their training by May.

While the table games came together quickly because the venue already existed and simply needed to be refurbished, other enhancements will take more time, including a 2,000-room hotel and a 7,000-seat concert venue.

In its application to the Gaming Facility Location Board prior to being approved for a license, Resorts World made lofty projections based on the assumption that it will operate the only NYC casino for the first four years:

“During this four-year period when RWNYC is the sole casino, it will generate a cumulative $11.5 billion GGR. At the proposed casino tax rates, this equates to $5 billion in tax revenue for the State.”

The company expanded on that in a press release issued last October, forecasting that the project will contribute $2.5 billion to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority over the first four years, the result of a $600 million upfront license fee and $1.9 billion in tax payments, which “will more than cover the expected $1.8 billion MTA budgeted for the three casino license fees and tax payments from 2026 to 2029.”

‘Yesterday’s model’

For all this financial optimism, some skepticism remains.

Lucy Dadayan, principal research associate at the Urban Institute, appeared on local New York CBS News 2 on Monday and pointed out how many competitors a new land-based casino has in the gambling landscape, including mobile sportsbooks and prediction markets (even if those don’t offer the same types of games).

“Are we investing in yesterday’s model, while consumers migrate toward digital betting?” Dadayan asked.

She said her research on casinos shows that revenue is usually strong at first but declines over time.

“Of course in the beginning, there is the novelty factor,” Dadayan said. “People are excited to try. And that’s why we see initial growth in revenues from gambling. However, over the long period of time, that growth slowly weakens.

“[Casinos] are not going to fix your budget problem,” she continued, referring specifically to New York state’s financial needs. “They are going to bring in some revenues, but the research shows that year-over-year growth in education spending is steadily growing, whereas … the revenue from casinos are much more volatile. We are not recession proof. If we hit another economic downturn, we will see decline in revenues from gambling.”

For the moment, though, Dadayan’s perspective is the outlier. With legal tables available in New York City for the first time, Queens and the surrounding area are mostly in celebration mode. Nas got it started. We’ll see what kind of roll the New York gaming community goes on from here.