The gaming industry came together this week at the 28th annual East Coast Gaming Congress (ECGC), held at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City. The conference, produced by the Cooper Levenson law firm, Spectrum Gaming Group and PlayDoIt, drew industry operators, regulators, legislators, suppliers and other stakeholders for sessions examining critical challenges and opportunities faced by the industry.
Among the topics examined at the conference were challenges from unregulated and illegal gambling, the future of Atlantic City amid competitive challenges from pending New York downstate casinos, emerging payment technologies and more.
Highlights of the conference included keynote speeches by American Gaming Association (AGA) President and CEO Bill Miller and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, and the presentation of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award to James F. Allen, chairman of Hard Rock International and CEO of Seminole Gaming.
Miller kicked off the conference with the first of the program’s “Industry Leader” presentations, in which he interviewed Bill Hornbuckle, president and CEO of MGM Resorts International. In reviewing his 48 years in the casino business, Hornbuckle said the biggest challenge came from the shutdowns related to the Covid-19 pandemic, when MGM was forced to furlough 61,000 employees in the first 60 days.
Hornbuckle said the Covid-19 shutdown was more challenging than even the Great Recession of 2008, when occupancy in hotel-casinos was maintained and revenues held up despite the economic downturn.
Hornbuckle said the hospitality industry never fully recovered from the Covid-19 crisis, and called on the federal government to fund projects to draw international travel back to the U.S.
“(The White House) has to focus on making sure the tourism experience is seamless in world events such as the Olympics and the World Cup,” he said.
Hornbuckle touched on the Macau market, which MGM entered as a subconcessioner with Macau mogul Stanley Ho’s SJM Holdings. He said MGM’s market share has risen from 9 percent pre-Covid to the mid-teens, and while the market is not near the 2023 record of more than $45 billion in gross gaming revenue (GGR), it is projected to register a healthy $30 billion in GGR this year. “Macau is not going anywhere,” he said.
He also outlined MGM’s plans in Japan, where it will soon break ground as the first gaming licensee, and New York, where the Hard Rock partnership with Steve Cohen adjacent to the Citi Field ballpark is one of 10 vying for one of three downstate licenses to be awarded by the end of the year.
Hornbuckle also highlighted the Borgata, the resort opened by MGM and Boyd Gaming in 2003—MGM took over as sole operator in 2016. He emphasized continuing reinvestment in the property, still the market leader. “Despite everything that’s happened, we’ve survived,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Panel Discussions
The ECGC offered a complete lineup of panel presentations and roundtable discussions, beginning on the first day with “Critical Trends in Payments,” a presentation by Omer Sattar, co-founder and CEO of Sightline Payments.
Sattar outlined what he calls the “three pillars of iGaming:” KYC, or know your customer (“Who is the person?”); geolocation (“Where is the person?”); and payments (“Get the money, give the money back”).
Going forward, Sattar said understanding all the entities and people in the payment ecosystem will be critical. He said legal iGaming will need to stay on top of improvements in technology to counter threats from every direction, from the black market to fraud to entirely new gaming models in the online space.
Also on the first day, “Lotteries, Casinos—Frenemies or Friends” examined the relationships between lotteries and casinos, offering examples of how the two gaming verticals can work together. Moderated by James Carey, executive director of the New Jersey Lottery, the panel included Khalid Reed Jones of Virginia, and Helene Keeley of Delaware, both lottery executive directors themselves; along with Frank Suarez, president and CEO of the Connecticut Lottery.
The panel also included James Schultz, executive vice president of global and public policy for lottery supplier Scientific Games, and Micheale Shillan, CEO of WOW Lottery Ventures.
Panelists called for casinos and lotteries to work together as partners, with Delaware’s Keeley noting that the best way to do that is for the lottery to control all gaming, as in states like Delaware and Maryland, which also control lottery and casino gaming from a single agency.
New Jersey’s Carey said New Jersey casinos have worked as partners with the lottery since the inception of casinos in 1978, just two years after the lottery’s founding.
This session was followed by a longtime favorite of the conference, “View from Wall Street.” Top gaming analysts discussed issues critical to the industry. The discussion this year centered on the unprecedented tariffs by the Trump administration at the start of the month, which has sent gaming stocks on a roller coaster of volatility in recent weeks.
Top names in the gaming space plunged as much as 15 percent on April 3 before extending the losses on the final day of the trading week. The April 2 “Liberation Day” tariff announcement pushed the major indices to their worst two-day rout in five years. However, Trump’s announcement of a 90-day pause for most reciprocal tariffs provided a significant tailwind, as the overall market had one of its best single-day performances in history.
David Katz, managing director at Jeffries, said casino stocks have been the most frustrating in recent months. While some names look relatively cheap, investors are still looking for a catalyst that will lead to higher multiples, he explained.
The panel devoted a considerable amount of time to DraftKings, one of two leaders in the online sports betting (OSB) space. Analysts from two Wall Street firms, Jeffries and Deutsche Bank, lowered their first-quarter adjusted EBITDA guidance by more than 30 percent due to concerns surrounding OSB hold.
One panelist, though, remains bullish on DraftKings from a long-term perspective. Cameron McKnight, an analyst at Capital One Securities, reminded the audience that DraftKings ended 2024 with positive free cash flow. It represented the first time in DraftKings’ history that the company turned a profit on a full-year basis.
The next panel, titled “Future Shock: Confronting Unprecedented Challenges in Gaming,” featured Shawn Fluharty, a West Virginia lawmaker and president of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States (NCLGS); David Katz, a gaming analyst with Jeffries Capital; Mary Jo Flaherty, interim director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement; Yael Harel Hertz, CEO of TheLotter; David Brace, principal, innovation & technology for Continent 8; and Andrew Winchell, head of government affairs for Betr.
Kaufman noted how brick-and-mortar casinos have pumped billions into state and local governments through licensing fees, construction projects, job creation and taxes, and are facing battle after battle to maintain those contributions, as well as their own profits.
Fluharty noted that many of the challenges come not from outside the casino industry but from within the industry in the form of taxes and competition with other forms of gaming. Among the concerns as a multitude of bills are being introduced to add internet gaming to new states is the tax situation. He said lawmakers should pass bills that “raise revenues, don’t raise taxes.”
He added that industry concerns over cannibalization from iGaming are not slowing down the progress of legislative efforts to pass iGaming.
“I’ve heard industry leaders say iGaming cannibalizes land-based gaming, but that doesn’t mean iGaming is failing,” he said. “We haven’t had passage in many states, but many are looking at it. It’s coming.” He said President Donald Trump’s aversion to granting federal funds to states is likely to speed up efforts to legalize iGaming to fill revenue gaps.
Other concerns over internal industry competition involve lottery couriers, which players can use to purchase lottery tickets online, with the courier purchasing the actual tickets from retailers.
Hertz of TheLotter, a worldwide ticket purchasing and courier service, said there have been concerns that courier services eat into profits of lotteries that offer direct online ticket purchase and online scratch-off games, known as iLottery. She defended the courier mission, noting that with the correct regulatory framework, couriers can save states a lot of money, with sales retaining the business and profits of brick-and-mortar lottery retailers.
But the most pressing recent challenges to legal gaming, panelists said, comes from unregulated gaming, in the form of sweepstakes casinos and prediction markets.
Fluharty said NCLGS is working on model legislation to authorize internet gaming that includes a ban on sweepstakes casinos, which allow patrons to “purchase” products and use a mobile app or on-site computers to play games that can result in cash prizes. Fluharty said sweepstakes casinos skirt the law and provide unfair competition to companies that have gone through the rigorous process of licensing.
“Licensing is a privilege, not a right,” Fluharty said. “If you pass an iGaming bill, include a ban on sweepstakes, with penalties.”
The other potential unfair competitor to licensed casinos are emerging prediction markets, which treat wagers as “commodities” and allow customers to wager on events like political campaigns much as they would place wagers in a sportsbook.
While prediction exchange sites like Kalshi frame bets as “financial instruments” that pay off for correct predictions, Fluharty said they are really expanded sportsbooks. “If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck,” he said, dismissing the idea that the markets being gambled on will be treated as “commodities.”
The main panel on the second day of the conference dealt with the biggest looming competition to East Coast casinos, the pending licensure of three downstate casinos in New York, expected by the end of the year.
Although the conference was held on the Jersey Shore, the panel, which closed the conference, kept many attendees from leaving early.
The panel drew interest from the audience given the proximity of the Garden State to New York. Applicants are facing a June 27 deadline to submit casino licensing bids. The New York State Gaming Facility Location Board (GFLB) is expected to make its decision by December 1, with selected applicants required to submit a $500 million licensing fee by New Year’s Eve.
The constrained time frame will make for a hectic few months for the parties involved, said New York Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, who serves as chair of the New York Assembly Committee on Racing & Wagering. Under the process, the state will award up to three licenses at the completion of the contentious bidding war.
Jeff Gural, chairman of American Racing & Entertainment LLC, is familiar with the process since he received an upstate license in 2016 through Tioga Downs, a southern New York racetrack. Gural showered Mets owner Steve Cohen with praise for his joint bid with Hard Rock International for an $8 billion casino. Gural, though, articulated some of the complications that could ensue if Resorts World New York City also receives a bid. The two Queens properties are located just eight miles apart.
Resorts World New York is owned by the Genting Group, a Malaysian-based conglomerate. The New York operations differ from Resorts World Las Vegas (RWLV), a property developed by Genting Berhad.
The publicly traded corporation is registered with the Nevada Gaming Commission. Last month, the NGC approved the state’s $10.5 million settlement with RWLV in connection with a series of anti-money laundering deficiencies. RWLV did not accept any wrongdoing in the settlement. Woerner indicated that the character of the applicants should be a consideration in the bidding process.
Given the pressure the state is under to complete the process by year’s end, Gural noted that he thinks the GFLB will meet the December deadline. Members of the audience largely disagreed. Patrick Brown, founding partner, Brown & Weinraub, conducted an informal poll at the panel. Approximately 75 percent of the crowd expressed skepticism that the process would be completed by the fourth-quarter deadline.
Industry Leaders
With just the one panel discussion, the second day of the conference was dominated by Industry Leader presentations. If there was one issue that stood out from all the industry CEOs who spoke, it was the need to rein in so-called “skill games,” which have proliferated into the hundreds of thousands across several states.
Skill games are slot-like machines placed in convenience stores, pizza shops, gas stations and other locations. Their manufacturers claim they are legal because there is a small element of skill involved in deciding the outcome. Opponents say that the “skill” element is dubious at best, and that the games are essentially illegal slot machines that operate without regulation, vetting for fairness, or, perhaps most notably, taxation.
The AGA’s Miller, interviewed by ECGC co-founder Michael Pollock—who studied the skill games extensively while an executive of Spectrum Gaming—noted that some states have been more responsible than others on the skill-game issue, noting that Virginia took action to ban the games. He pointed to Pennsylvania as one state that has been losing the skill-game battle.
While law enforcement officials and government leaders in the state consider the games illegal slot machines, their main manufacturer, Georgia-based Pace-O-Matic, has won several court decisions returning games that state police had confiscated.
“As we sit here today, and there are various estimates on (the number of skill games operating) in Pennsylvania,” Miller said. “I’ve heard 100,000, but maybe a more reasonable estimate is at least 70,000 across the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in small businesses.”
Miller said Pennsylvania officials are faced with either the monumental task of uprooting all those machines or legalizing and regulating them. “That’s the multimillion-dollar question,” Miller said. “And I think that the ban in Virginia showed that if we’re united, if we have a common purpose, if we can show who these guys are, that they are bad actors, and that we can turn the legislature where at least the attorney general and the governor are against them.”
The Pennsylvania industry leaders who spoke certainly agreed.
“If you’re Penn Entertainment and you spend $50 million on a gaming license and then pay 52 cents on every dollar you make, you should have some kind of assurance by the government that you are treated like any other legal businesses in the state,” Miller said.
In their presentations, Jay Dorris, president and CEO of PCI Gaming—which operates the Wind Creek Bethlehem casino in Pennsylvania—and Tim Drehkoff, CEO of Rush Street Gaming, which operates two Pennsylvania casinos, decried the absence of a level playing field created by skill games.
“In Pennsylvania, there are more skill games than there are slot machines,” Dorris said. “Regulators declared them illegal, and the courts shot them down. Legislatures must deal with it.” He noted a hearing last year in which a skill-game manufacturer testified that estimates of 67,000 skill games in the state were low.
“In one year, at the low end they were pulling in more than $2 billion,” he said. “At the high end, $7 billion.”
He added that in addition to operating tax-free, the games are not vetted for fairness, there is no guarantee of payment, and there is no enforcement of age restrictions — “other than this guy,” he said, displaying a picture of a pizza shop cashier.
Drehkoff aired similar complaints. “We create jobs, generate tons of tax revenue, and create entertainment districts that are economic engines for their states,” he said. “We’re proud of what we’ve done.
“These accomplishments are all being threatened by new forms of gaming that don’t contribute anything to the state. Illinois offers a good example of what happens when distributed gaming comes online. But if you look at data 2012-2019 casino revenues were down 20 percent, and jobs were down 24 percent.” He attributed the dip to sweepstakes casinos and skill games.
Drehkoff displayed a picture of a mall storefront that resembles a VLT venue, with skill games that appear just like slot machines, while noting that due to skill games, casino same-store jobs dipped 26 percent from 2019 to 2024. “That’s 4,000 jobs taken off line while the rest of the industry grew,” he said.
Hard Rock’s Allen also addressed illegal, unregulated operators in his Industry Leader presentation. “This is not a field of competition that we know is fair,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s any market right now where we’re not spending at least $1 billion. How do we go into a community and promise thousands of jobs and commit individuals in many cases to leave their existing employment if we don’t know what the competitive landscape is going to be because of illegal activity?”
David Cordish, chairman of The Cordish Companies, devoted his presentation to his longstanding opposition to internet gaming. He presented statistics showing that brick-and-mortar revenues have been negatively affected in several jurisdictions as a result of the introduction of iGaming.
Recognizing Allen
In accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award, Allen, a South Jersey native, steered all the credit for his achievements over a 45-year career to people he has worked with in all that time.
Allen is the seventh person to receive this award in the nearly 30-year ECGC history. ECGC honored Allen for his career as one of the most influential leaders in the global gaming and hospitality industry. During Allen’s tenure, Seminole Hard Rock has demonstrated exceptional hospitality and financial performance, setting industry benchmarks with its success.
Responsible for all gaming, hospitality and entertainment operations at the Seminole Tribe of Florida (STOF) since 2001, Allen has guided the development of Seminole Gaming into one of the world’s most successful casino and integrated resort operators, with seven casino locations throughout Florida, including the world’s first Guitar Hotel, which opened in October 2019.
Allen led STOF’s 2007 acquisition of HRI, the first of a major international company by a North American Indian tribe, which has expanded its global presence from 46 to nearly 80 countries and over 300 locations including Hard Rock cafes, hotels, casinos, Rock Shops and live music venues.
“This recognition is a testament to the hard-working team at Hard Rock International and Seminole Gaming, whose dedication and passion have driven our success,” Allen said. “I extend my deepest gratitude to the Seminole Tribe of Florida for their continued leadership and am proud of what we have accomplished—from expanding our global footprint to innovating in the gaming and hospitality industries, and forming incredible alliances with icons in entertainment and sports.
“This award inspires us to continue pushing boundaries and setting new standards of excellence.”
