New York’s Monticello Raceway has grandfathered in its survival, at least through the better part of the next decade, thanks to the same legislation that will see the most expensive and elaborate of the state’s new commercial casinos opening on its doorstep in just a few weeks.
It was back in 2014 that the horsemen at Monticello, which stands only five miles from where the $1 billion Resorts World Catskills will hold its much-anticipated grand opening on February 16, locked in an agreement to coincide with the opening that guarantees purses at the harness track will not fall below the level experienced in 2013, the year the state’s voters approved a constitutional amendment to permit full-scale commercially owed casinos.
How the subsidy will be funded over the life of the agreement is not entirely clear, though. Nor is it known what will happen to the track’s VLT racino in the face of the massive competition coming just up the road.
Initially, the horsemen will have a gift of 200,000 shares of stock in Empire Resorts to work with. That’s the listed company that owns Monticello through a subsidiary and also owns Resorts World Catskills, although the real money behind the casino is Malaysian conglomerate Genting Group. Genting owns the Resorts World brand, along with the giant Resorts World New York City racino in Queens, and holds a majority stake in Empire through a company controlled by Genting Chairman Lim Kok Thay.
The shares currently are worth around $5.5 million, according to news reports. But of course that will fluctuate with market conditions. So it appears that much is riding on the success of Resorts World Catskills in a statewide market packed with nearly a dozen casino options and another eight racinos and machine gaming venues.
Alan Schwartz, who heads the horsemen’s group, acknowledged his organization may have to sell some of the stock to maintain purses in the near term.
“We would like to have higher purses during the summer,” he said.
The horsemen also have asked and been granted 207 racing days in 2018 and Schwartz expects those numbers to remain constant over the life of the agreement, with the track hoping to continue its historically solid performance as a simulcast site.
