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New York City will probably soon see three new casinos, whose owners could rake in profits because of a recent surge in gambling in the United States that has some campaigners worried.
The New York gaming facility location board this week approved three proposed casinos in the US’s largest city – two in Queens and one in the Bronx – after determining the businesses would create new jobs and generate billions in tax revenue, according to the group’s report.
The state gaming commission is expected to follow the board’s recommendations, the New York Times reported. The casinos are projected to open over the next five years.
But some city residents and gambling researchers argue that urban casinos do not benefit cities and instead just take revenue from existing businesses while increasing gambling addiction and not actually providing many high-paying jobs.
“They say it’s going to generate all this money, but it’s not generating that money,” said Jonathan Krutz, a Boise State University emeritus professor of marketing who has done extensive research on casinos.
Krutz added: “It’s just moving it around in the economy. Particularly in a larger population area, it’s not tending to draw people from outside to gamble, but it’s just taking money from its own citizens.”
After the US supreme court struck down a law in 2018 that prevented most US states from legalizing sports betting, the industry exploded. In the third quarter this year, the US gaming industry generated almost $19bn in gross gaming revenue, a 7% increase from the same period a year earlier, which marked 19 consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth, the American Gaming Industry reported.
Since that court decision, there has also been a 23% increase in internet searches for gambling addiction help, according to Jama Internal Medicine journal study.
In 2022, New York state lawmakers approved the issuance of three licenses for casinos in its biggest city. Developers tried to open three in Manhattan.
A Broadway theater trade group formed a coalition against a proposed casino in Times Square because “the economic benefits of casinos dwindle over time” while “theaters and businesses that [the casino] would disrupt have proven to [grow] the city’s jobs and economy decade after decade”, the group stated.
Local boards rejected all three requests.
In Queens, residents also protested a proposed casino next to Citi Field, where the New York Mets play.
“My husband and my three sons all fell into gambling. Gambling has destroyed my family, and many families like mine,” Bao Jin Qiu, a Queens resident and retired home care worker, told a November rally, the Queens Ledger reported.
Despite such concerns, the board approved three bids: the Hard Rock Metropolitan Park next to Citi Field; the expansion of Resorts World, a video lottery facility in Queens, into a full commercial casino; and Bally’s Bronx, a casino resort at a golf course.
They did so, mostly, because consultants projected that the casinos would generate $7bn in tax revenue, as well as create jobs and community benefits like park space and subway improvements, said Vicki Bean, chair of the board.
The group determined the casinos would “not supplant something that would otherwise” open at those locations “and produce anything near the same amount of tax revenue”, Bean said.
Kenny Cohen, a member of the Queens community board 8, which approved the Hard Rock, thinks it will generate tourism and jobs.
“These are going to be good union jobs that provide a pathway to these workers and to these community members into, hopefully, the middle class,” said Cohen, an electrician and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union member.
But it’s unclear whether casinos actually spur economic development.
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“Some studies have concluded that” casinos “create jobs and improve the regional economies”, a report from the Rockefeller Institute of Government states. Others found they “simply alter the mix of employment and income among industries”.
Bally’s claimed it would use 15,000 full-time construction workers, according to the New York board’s report. Once the casino opens, however, it will only need 3,503 full-time employees.
“It always struck me as odd that that you would build a casino for the construction jobs because those are ephemeral,” Krutz, of Boise State, said. “Would you put a nuclear waste site in New York City for the construction jobs? I mean, what you are building is something that is going to be an active drain on the local economy.”
Asked about a potential increase in gambling addiction, Bean said the board urged the commission to require that casino operators “be much more aggressive in terms of the problem gambling, that they don’t just help problem gamblers by identifying resources but that they intervene”.
“There will be a certain number of people who have that problem, and I’m very sympathetic to those people and to their families,” Bean said. “But those people may also be going to whatever gambling is available to them, so I think it’s up to the agencies and it’s up to the state to really enforce this.”
Tax revenue from casinos that opened in recent decades in Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia also stayed flat or declined, according to an Urban Institute and Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center report.
A temporary Bally’s casino in Chicago generated $16.1m in gaming tax revenue for the city in 2024, less than half of what was projected, according to a city council report.
The novelty of a new casino eventually wears off, and “the market is saturated”, said Lucy Dadayan, principal research associate at the Tax Policy Center.
Also, people spending more money on online betting likely means they spend less on brick-and-mortar casinos, said Dadayan.
Kristy Marmorato, a city council member from the Bronx, led a successful effort earlier this year to defeat a rezoning for the proposed Bally’s casino, which she described as a “predatory development”.
But now that the casino operators appear to be moving forward, “I hope for the best for them,” Marmorato said. “We just want to make sure they follow through with their promises to my district.”
