Key Takeaways
• New York’s three downstate casino licences, Metropolitan Park (Hard Rock and Mets owner Steve Cohen, Queens), Ferry Point (Bally’s, Bronx) and Resorts World’s Queens expansion, all received final state approval on 15 December 2025.
• Each operator paid a minimum $500 million licensing fee, and the tax rates on offer ranged from 25% to 56% on slots; a rate every board involved will be carrying as a fixed cost for the full 15 to 25 year licence term.
• Resorts World’s 56% slots rate, the most aggressive of the three, leans heavily on unsecured debt financing, and its Las Vegas affiliate’s undisclosed $10.5 million Nevada AML fine only surfaced after the bid was in.
• Online casino gaming is still not authorised in New York, so all three licences cover physical resorts only, leaving the state’s largest open question deferred rather than answered.
The Update
New York’s State Gaming Commission gave final approval on 15 December 2025 to three downstate casino licences, closing a process that had run, in one form or another, since 2013. The process had narrowed to these three finalists after the state’s Gaming Facility Location Board recommended them all on 1 December.
Hard Rock International, in partnership with Mets owner Steve Cohen, won the licence for Metropolitan Park, an $8 billion mixed-use development next to Citi Field in Queens. The deal carries a 25% tax rate on slots and 10% on table games, with an opening pencilled in for June 2030. Bally’s won the licence for a $2.3 billion to $4 billion casino-hotel complex at Ferry Point in the Bronx, offering 30% on slots and 10% on tables, targeting a 2030 opening, with a 15-year licence and a 10-year renewal option.
Resorts World won approval to expand its existing Queens video lottery facility into a full casino, worth $3.3 billion to $5.5 billion. It came in with by far the most aggressive tax offer of the three, 56% on slots and 30% on tables, with an opening now expected in 2031.
Each operator paid a minimum $500 million licensing fee and committed to a minimum $500 million capital investment, and the Gaming Commission is projecting the mature downstate market will generate around $5.5 billion in gross gaming revenue by 2033.
The Strategic Consequence
This is a land-based decision with online consequences that New York has deliberately deferred, as the state has not yet authorised online casino gaming; all three licences are for physical resorts only. The tax rates on offer show how differently operators are willing to price access to the largest untapped casino market in the United States.
Resorts World’s 56% slots rate is roughly double what Hard Rock offered for the same licence. The board’s own papers flagged that Resorts World is leaning heavily on future operating cash flow and debt financing, with only $925 million of committed debt secured against a $3.3 billion to $5.5 billion build. Just 1% of its capital allocation was earmarked for Queens-based businesses, a point the board asked the operator to address.
For directors at any of the three groups, or at operators watching from outside, the lesson is that a headline tax rate offered to win a licence becomes a fixed cost. That cost has to be carried for the 15 to 25 year term of the licence. Resorts World’s board will need to show the market, at each earnings call between now and 2031, that a 56% rate on slots is consistent with the returns it has promised investors, particularly once construction financing costs are added.
The suitability question sits alongside the financial one. Resorts World’s Las Vegas affiliate was fined $10.5 million by Nevada regulators for anti-money-laundering failures, and that history was not disclosed to New York officials during the bidding process. That is a live example of how a group’s compliance record in one licensed jurisdiction follows it into licensing decisions in another. It is the kind of detail investor relations teams need to have ready to address before an analyst raises it unprompted.
There is also a competitive geography problem baked into this outcome: two of the three licences went to sites within a few miles of each other in Queens, and all Manhattan bids were eliminated. Bally’s needed direct assistance from the New York City mayor’s office on rezoning twice to get its Bronx site over the line. The Metropolitan Park bid survived a late lawsuit from the US Tennis Association that was only resolved through a fresh agreement with the city.
None of that is unusual in a contested licensing process. But boards weighing entry into other new casino markets, from Texas to Brazil, should treat the New York process as a template for how much political and community capital a licence actually costs beyond the cheque. MGM’s decision to withdraw its Yonkers application altogether, on the grounds that a 15-year licence term made a $1.8 billion investment and $500 million fee economically unworkable, is a useful data point for any operator modelling whether to bid at all.
Boardroom Questions
1. If our organisation holds licences in jurisdictions where a partner or competitor has an undisclosed regulatory enforcement history, what is our process for surfacing that before it becomes a shareholder or press question?
2. Does our capital structure for any large-scale project rely as heavily on future operating cash flow and unsecured debt financing as Resorts World’s New York bid appears to, and what is our contingency if that financing does not materialise on schedule?
3. Where we are weighing a tax rate or fee offer to win a licence, have we modelled that rate as a fixed cost across the full licence term, including renewal, rather than as a one-off bidding decision?
Sources
1. iGaming Business, ‘New York casino process comes to a close with all three finalists awarded licences’, 15 December 2025, https://igamingbusiness.com/legal-compliance/licensing/new-york-casino-race-three-licences-awarded/
2. SBC Americas, ‘New York Awards Downstate Casino Licenses to Three Bidders’, 2 December 2025, https://sbcamericas.com/2025/12/02/new-york-approve-downstate-casino-bids/
3. NY1, ‘All three city casino bids get final approval for licenses’, 15 December 2025, https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2025/12/15/nyc-casino-bids-state-gaming-commission-vote
4. amNewYork, ‘NYS Gaming Board approves full casino licenses for all three active bids in Queens and Bronx’, December 2025, https://www.amny.com/business-finance/nys-gaming-board-approves-nyc-casino-licenses/
5. Forbes, ‘Billionaire Steve Cohen, Bally’s And Resorts World Win Battle For New York City Casino Licenses’, 1 December 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2025/12/01/billionaire-steve-cohen-ballys-and-resorts-world-win-battle-for-new-york-city-casino-licenses/