New York Fields Eight Bids for Three Downstate Casino Opportunities
Posted on: June 27, 2025, 09:13h.
Last updated on: June 27, 2025, 10:26h.
- New York’s Request for Applications for three downstate casino licenses has concluded
- The New York Gaming Facility Location Board fielded eight bids
- The bidders are MGM, Genting, Caesars, Hard Rock, Mohegan, Chicasaw Nation, Rush Street, and Bally’s
The New York Gaming Facility Location Board has fielded eight applications for casino developments in the downstate region, which includes New York City, Westchester County, and Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk counties).
The eight casino bids come from or involve Bally’s, Caesars Entertainment, Chickasaw Nation, Genting, Hard Rock, Mohegan, MGM Resorts, and Rush Street Gaming.
The proposals range from the Bronx to Times Square to Coney Island, with each pledging substantial community benefits like affordable housing, public green space, infrastructure improvements, thousands of new jobs, millions of new tax revenue, and investment opportunities for locals and area businesses. With the Request for Applications (RFAs) in hand, the New York Gaming Facility Location Board will now assign each bid a Community Advisory Committee.
For the seven bids within the five boroughs, the CAC consists of six members — Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and the applicable state senator, assemblymember, borough president, and city council member. For MGM’s bid in Yonkers — the only application outside of NYC — the CAC includes Hochul, Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano, Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D), and Assemblymember Nader Sayegh (D).
Next Steps
The CACs are to begin their statutory work on their respective bids immediately, per state regulations. Hochul and NYC Mayor Eric Adams will presumably allow the locally elected officials to handle the early work, as they will respectively sit on eight and seven committees.
While most bids have already completed their State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) reports and secured the necessary entitlements and land-use zoning requirements needed to break ground, the official deadline for obtaining those signoffs is Sept. 30, 2025. Around that time, each CAC is to vote on the project.
Bids that field a two-thirds majority support will then submit supplemental application material with reasoning for their backing and other items, including a proposed tax rate on gross gaming revenue, to the Gaming Facility Location Board.
The Board will review each final bid and is expected to render the three winners “by Dec. 1, 2025.” The New York State Gaming Commission would then issue the licenses before the year’s end.
Years in the Making
New York lawmakers authorized three downstate casinos with slot machines and live-dealer table games in 2013. The licenses, however, came with a 10-year moratorium on being issued to allow four upstate casinos to open with an upper hand to help revitalize the Catskills and other regions in desperate need of an economic jumpstart.
The upstate New York casinos largely underperformed. In 2022, Hochul agreed to start the downstate casino licensing a year early to “expedite” getting the resorts up and running to generate critically needed state tax revenue amid a population exodus during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Three years later, bidding has officially begun.
All but MGM and Genting’s bids are for entirely new gaming properties. MGM and Genting currently operate racinos with video lottery terminals and electronic table games at Empire City Casino by MGM Resorts and Resorts World New York City.
State projections estimate that the three downstate casinos, upon market maturation, could generate annual gross gaming revenue of $4.4 billion. That would make the city the second-largest gaming market in the country behind only Las Vegas.
Last Comment ( 1 )
Resorts World and Empire City are all but assured to get two of the three licenses so this is a race for one license really. The third pick will either be Hard Rock Metropolitan Park or Caesar’s Palace Times Square.