Craig Billiings, chief executive officer of Wynn Resorts, has warned Massachusetts gaming regulators and lawmakers that they can’t continue to expand gambling and expect casinos to continue to thrive.
“When Massachusetts legalized casino gaming in 2011, it made a specific bargain,” Billings wrote in an editorial published in the Boston Globe. “The Commonwealth would allow a small number of highly regulated destination resort casinos and a single slots facility.”
In return, Billings wrote, the state would receive significant private investment, good jobs, state tax revenue, municipal payments, and long-term economic development.
“This was not an unlimited gaming market,” he wrote. “It was a limited-license model built around major capital investment and serious public obligations. Economics mattered then, and it matters now.”
Currently, there are three casinos in Massachusetts, including Encore Boston Harbor, operated by Wynn Resorts, Plainridge Park Casino, owned by Penn Entertainment, and the MGM Springfield, operated by MGM Resorts International. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe operates a slot parlor.
In August, the state’s three casinos generated approximately $101.9 million in gross gaming revenue (GGR). Plainridge Park, a category 2 slot facility, is taxed on 49% of GGR, while MGM and Encore, category 1 resort-casinos, are taxed on 25% of GGR.
Since each facility opened, the state has collected approximately $2.53 billion in total taxes and assessments from the casino operators.
Billings was blunt in his assessment that “Massachusetts is steadily undermining that model,” noting that sports betting is live, iLottery launched earlier this year, and iGaming legislation is under consideration.
In June, the House passed an economic development bill with an amendment allowing horse racing licensees to develop facilities offering historic horse racing (HHR) machines. The amendment would allow simulcast centers at Suffolk Downs and Raynham Park to operate HHR machines.
“These are effectively slot machines operating under a different regulatory label,” Billings wrote. “They compete for the same customers and discretionary spending without the licensing costs, tax obligations, community commitments, capital investment, responsible gaming controls, or regulatory oversight required of destination resort casinos.”
Billings made it clear that each decision expands gaming without fully accounting for its cumulative effect on the operators expected to sustain the original model.
Regional competition amplifies the challenge, he wrote. New Hampshire, which has no income or sales tax, legalized HHR machines in 2021 and video lottery terminals in 2025.
“That new supply doesn’t stay in New Hampshire,” Billing said. “It pulls gaming demand directly out of Massachusetts while carrying none of the tax or regulatory obligations required here.”
Wynn invested $2.6 billion, remediated a long-contaminated industrial site, and opened Encore Boston Harbor in 2019 under rules Massachusetts set, he added.
“Since then, Encore has generated more than $1.1 billion in state tax revenue, paid $1.3 billion in employee compensation, made $370 million in community payments, donated $15 million to local nonprofits, and supported thousands of jobs.”
Billings said the state, host, and surrounding communities, shareholders, and employees all depend on Encore’s success. Each has a legitimate claim: tax revenue, community payments, a return on invested capital, and fair wages. But all are ultimately tied to the same revenue base, one that is being divided by each new source of competing gaming supply, the gaming executive wrote.
“Extend that trend far enough, and eventually there’s no business left standing to write any of those checks,” Billings wrote.
As technology has introduced new gaming platforms, Billings wrote, Massachusetts policy makers have embraced them while largely ignoring their impacts on existing employees, employers, and future investments.
That is the backdrop against which Encore Boston Harbor’s current labor dispute is playing out, he said. Roughly 1,300 Teamsters and Unite Here members are on strike after their contract expired on Aug. 31. They walked out on Sept. 4. They’re still out, he said.
“Over the past four years, labor costs at Encore have increased nearly 37 percent while revenue has grown less than 2 percent,” Billings wrote. “That math cannot be ignored. No business can absorb that imbalance indefinitely, particularly when state policy is simultaneously putting additional pressure on the revenue base.”
Reaching a sustainable labor agreement is part of adapting to the environment Massachusetts is creating, he said.
“None of this, by itself, caused the current labor dispute,” Billings wrote. “But compounding wage growth against an increasingly pressured revenue base is not sustainable for Encore or any similarly situated operator. If those pressures keep building unaddressed, this will not be the last time they surface at the bargaining table.”
Billings confirmed that elected officials have contacted him to express concern about the strike, with some even appearing on the picket line in support of the union.
“I understand the instinct, and I do not doubt its sincerity,” he wrote. “But I do not believe lawmakers have fully connected the dots between demanding operators pay workers more while, in the same legislative session, supporting legislation that redirects a portion of those operators’ revenue to new, lightly regulated competitors with none of the same financial obligations.”
Billings reminded lawmakers that Massachusetts has benefited enormously from the casino framework it established in 2011, but that framework depends on policy stability.
“Supply and demand are not abstractions lawmakers can legislate away, and destination resort casinos are not piggy banks that endlessly refill themselves,” Billings wrote. “Every new form of gaming competing for the same fixed pool of demand puts pressure somewhere — on tax projections, host community payments, future investment, or ultimately what is available for the people on the floor.
“Lawmakers who support that expansion don’t bear those consequences. Operators, shareholders, communities, and employees do,” Billings added.
