New York casinos fall short of projected earnings

The owner of Tioga Downs Casino said that the casino market in upstate New York is saturated.

US.- Jeff Gural, owner of Tioga Downs Casino near Binghamton said that New York’s gambling market is saturated. The three casinos that opened in recent months haven’t achieved the estimated results that operators and the state Gaming Commission expected for the first months of operations.

“The reality is that it is a saturated market upstate. Everybody is competing for the same customer,” said Gural, whose casino opened in December and has generated over US$46 million in gross gaming revenue (GGR), US$15.3 million of them contributed to the state and local governments through July. The numbers are approximately 35 percent less than Gural projected before opening the facility. Moreover, he said earlier this month that the hotel opening in November will likely help that number: “We’ve got a lot of work to do to get the revenues where they need to be.”

Alan Woinski, president of New Jersey-based consulting firm Gaming USA Corp said that there is not enough business in upstate New York. “You just can’t have casinos, racetrack casinos and tribal casinos that close to each other,” he added.

Nevertheless, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stated last week that it is too early to judge the success of the gambling facilities, local news outlet New York Daily News reported. “The variance with the (revenue) projections doesn’t bother me that much. They have all been widely successful in creating jobs and building beautiful complexes,” he added.