New York’s efforts to expand gambling in the state through online games and new casinos are confronting new roadblocks, both in the state legislature and in the panel formed to award licenses for five new downstate casinos, including three in New York City.
Any effort to legalize online casino gaming this year died last week when both the House and Senate submitted budget proposals without funding for iGaming. State Senator Joe Addabbo, the gaming proponent who championed sports betting in the state, complained in an interview with US Bets that decisions to leave online casino gaming out of the budgets were made with little discussion.
“I’m not going to be the only one talking about this,” Addabbo told US Bets. “I offered everyone at our (iCasino) roundtable an opportunity to talk to the governor, talk to my Senate leader. Let’s start talking about this. Why wait? If they don’t want it, fine.”
According to the report in US Bets, the union that represents casino workers in the state, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, provided the strongest resistance to establishing online casino games, its argument being that online casinos would cannibalize the business of New York’s brick-and-mortar casinos and video lottery retailers.
Addabbo pointed to studies from Spectrum Gaming and others that conclude iCasino games do not cannibalize brick-and-mortar gaming. “Both iGaming and retail are increasing in states that have iGaming,” he gold US Bets. “There is no cannibalization.”
The bills to legalize online casino games also have drawn complaints from New York’s Seneca Nation, as the legislation excludes the state’s tribes from directly participating in the new iCasino platform.
“Any discussion of new mobile gaming has to take Native nations into account,” said Seneca Nation President Rickey Armstrong Sr. in an interview with the Olean Times Herald. “We can’t have a repeat of how the state ran roughshod over our compacts with previous expansions of state-licensed gaming. The state must keep its promises that our nations will have exclusive rights to pursue gaming within our regions of the state, and any effort to expand mobile gaming must respect that.
“We have seen New York push the continued evolution and expansion of the gaming market seemingly every day for the last 20 years, while our compact has stood frozen in time.”
Commercial racinos and casino operations, as well as mobile sports betting, legalized in 2021, have progressed without inclusion of the Senecas, whose casinos employ around 3,000 workers in western New York.
“This latest expansion push in Albany underscores the need for a fair gaming compact for the Seneca Nation that reflects the dramatic expansions of state-licensed gaming that have taken place around us over the past two decades,” Armstrong said. “We are supporting thousands of jobs, individuals, families and businesses in western New York that can’t be ignored.”
Meanwhile, predictions on when three new downstate casinos authorized last year, will actually open are now pegged at 2026 or later. The Gaming Facility Location Board, which itself is not complete as only three of five members have been appointed, is reviewing answers to questions posed in its first Request for Applications. More questions and reviews will follow.
As that process grinds along, some casino proposals are running into new local opposition. Last week, the trustees of Hofstra University published an open letter opposing Las Vegas Sands’ proposed casino at the site of Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. The letter pointed out that 40,000 students ranging from preschool to graduate-level attend school in the area immediately surrounding the site of Nassau Coliseum.
“The Nassau Hub is an entirely inappropriate location for a casino,” the letter said. “It is surrounded by educational institutions from preschool through graduate school, and a diversity of suburban communities that should not be exposed to the increased traffic congestion, crime, economic harm to local businesses, and other negative impacts that a casino development would likely bring. There are other locations in and around New York City to site a casino that are not in such proximity to multiple educational institutions where so many young people live and learn.”
Despite the opposition from Hofstra, Nassau Community College and Long Island University have partnered with Las Vegas Sands to potentially create an expanded hospitality management program on the NCC campus to serve the new casino resort.
But Hofstra is not the only group lining up against the Las Vegas Sands casino project, which would be dubbed Sands New York City. Last week, dozens of Nassau County residents held a rally on the stops of the County Legislature building to protest the project, citing many of the same reasons as the Hofstra trustees—the proximity of schools, increased traffic, the potential for crime and gambling addiction heading the list.
“Young people are already coping with ongoing problems,” said Hofstra student Chanda Washington at the rally, according to the Long Island News. “And the casino would only exacerbate those concerns.”
One of the only recent positive developments for potential New York casino developers came to New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, who wants to redevelop land adjacent to the Mets’ Citi Field stadium to include a casino.
A state lawmaker introduced a bill last week that would authorize New York City to build on the parking lot at Citi Field, which would help pave the way for Cohen’s plan.
The legislation introduced by Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry (D-Queens) calls for the parking lot to be developed for “a gaming facility and, in conjunction with such facility, commercial, retail, entertainment, recreational, hotel, convention, and or community facility uses,” according to the bill.
Because the Citi Field lot is technically parkland, designated in 1939 as part of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, it requires state intervention to “alienate” it to facilitate construction.
Aubry’s bill specifies that the land be discontinued as parkland “through the entering of leases or other agreements with New Green Willets, LLC, its affiliates, or any other entity or entities,” referencing the lobbying firm owned by Cohen. As part of the “park alienation,” the city would have to find at least 20 acres of replacement parkland.
