Sometimes stories in the Adams Daily align to form a narrative. While the stories themselves may be totally different, something, regardless of how hidden or vague it may be, connects them. Friday, August 15, 2025, had such a tale to tell.
The lead stories dealt with news from Indiana, Virginia, Maryland, Iowa, New York, Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan reporting gaming revenue increases in July 2025 over July 2024, and an announcement from Missouri that Circa and DraftKings had been awarded mobile sports betting licenses untethered to any casino. It was a major victory for Circa, as it beat out FanDuel. And in Asia, the Sands is paying a dividend. Gaming is healthy and growing.
The Nevada section featured an article celebrating the opening of Benny Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas on August 14, 1951. According to KVVU Fox 5 in Las Vegas, the Horseshoe was a game changer, with carpets instead of sawdust-covered floors, complimentary drinks and meals for all gamblers, and high limits. Benny and the Horseshoe became legendary for those limits, taking any bet, a feat never repeated by other operators. The rest of the section covered upcoming entertainment events in the city, including two music festivals and a couple of big-names one-nighters.
In the third section of the Adams Daily, containing national gaming news, were articles from Atlantic City, Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York City, Springfield, Massachusetts, and Norfolk, Virginia. Those articles and cities contained the unspoken narrative, the subtext of the day. Although gaming is healthy, nothing is a slam dunk.
After careful study, the city of Pittsburgh thinks Live! Casino is the right place for a hotel and convention center; city leaders are optimistic that the project will attract investors and bring more revenue to the city.
Atlantic City is getting a new hotel, sans casino, near the Boardwalk. If the Seahaus is successful, it will bring more people to town. And the general manager believes there is a market for people who “are seeking a more restorative and relaxing alternative to the city’s vibrant gaming and entertainment scene.” Like Pittsburg, Atlantic City is hoping if you build it, they will come.
In Norfolk, the Interim Gaming Hall is a temporary casino located in a giant tent. It will open in November and have 130 slot machines, no table games, and a food truck. Boyd Gaming wants the Interim to offer “a sneak peek of the exciting gaming experience and memorable guest service.” Boyd hopes the Interim will hold prospective customers’ attention until a full service, amenity-filled, permanent casino opens in 2027.
Next up is Chicago, Bally’s, and financing. Bally’s opened a temporary casino in September 2023 and is in the process of building a $1.7 billion resort to replace it. The article concerns Bally’s announcement that its IPO closed. The corporation hoped to raise $250 million to help in the cost of construction, but according to a later article, it raised less than a sixth of that. The temporary has underwhelmed the critics and the tax collectors. Since it opened in September 2023, Bally’s temporary has generated $228.8 million in gaming revenue, ranking it 4th among casinos in Illinois for the period. By the end of 2024, the property had generated 47 percent of the expected tax revenue for the state. No one is quite certain that the permanent will perform any better, regardless of the price tag.
The news from New York City is a continuation of the city’s casino-licensing drama. It is being played out in the media and in committee hearings. This week, Caesars Times Square is in the spotlight. Caesars and its partners are proposing a $5 billion investment in Times Square; the project got its first hearing this week. The theaters on Broadway lined up in opposition, lighting up their billboards with a “No Casino” message. New York City and the state will spend the rest of this year reviewing bids before awarding three licenses for the New York City area.
Last up in this tale is from the MGM in Springfield, Massachusetts. MGM Resorts has a casino license for Springfield. And like the process in New York City, MGM had to compete for the license. The casino opened in August 2018 and cost nearly $1 billion to build. MGM had high hopes for big results, but like Bally’s in Chicago, MGM Springfield has underperformed. It generates about one-third of Encore Boston Harbor, a Wynn Resorts property. On August 14, the Springfield Republican reported that MGM Springfield employed 1,552 people, about the same as last year, but far short of the 3,000 MGM had promised in its bid to win the casino license.
That is the narrative in a nutshell. In seeking a casino license, proponents make some pretty big promises. Living up to those promises is very often very difficult. Not because anyone was intentionally lying, but because they simply overrated the potential market in the desire to obtain a license. The classic case was Harrah’s New Orleans. Harrah’s overestimated the New Orleans market and overpromised to get the license. It took years to right size the property and the promises to match the market.
It is a tricky calculation, matching a bid and promises to the real market potential. Wynn and Sands backed away from New York City, because they did not believe the market would produce enough revenue to justify the investment. As a friend once said, sometimes the best investments you make are those you do not make. If I had to vote on any of the properties that danced through the news on August 14, I would bet on Boyd. Not on the new hotel in Atlantic City, nor a convention center in Pittsburgh, and certainly not on Bally’s in Chicago. And in New York City, success will depend on the investments and the promises. It is unlikely that all of the bids will have the right formula. If Boyd has learned anything from operating in an intensely competitive residential market in Las Vegas, it is the skill to build to suit the market.
