We’re on the eve of the day the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board is expected to issue the fifth license for the Philadelphia area. It has to be awarded by a convoluted process called a “qualified majority,” whereby all four legislative appointees and one of the three gubernatorial appointees agree on a bidder.
The PGCB could still surprise us and award no license, as lies within their remit, but we’ve not heard anything indicating they’re leaning that way. Never mind that there’s 
already cannibalization occurring in the market, “Philadelphia clearly has the population and visitor base to support the additional Philadelphia license,” proclaimed Joseph Weinberg, managing partner of frontrunning Cordish Gaming. Whatever Cordish has that’s so compelling, it’s not its design … and one can’t help noting that Steve Wynn‘s abortive Philly casino was a carbon copy of what he proposed (but is redrawing) for Everett, Massachusetts.
Reports The Associated Press, “A report done this year for state lawmakers concluded that while SugarHouse and Harrah’s [Philadelphia] would take a hit, a second Philadelphia license would net the state tens of millions of dollars in new tax revenue. Critics say the projections were far too rosy,” as they usually tend to be, “but the report’s author, Philadelphia-based Econsult Solutions, stands by its work.”
Based on the revenue trajectory we’ve seen in the Philly area, we’d have to agree with Keith Foley of Moody’s Investors Service, who describes the market as “topped off.” Still, to just say ‘no’ would require more intestinal fortitude than the PGCB has shown itself to possess. As Gaming USA President Alan Woinski predicts, “The easy way is to grant it, pass the buck, let a lawsuit happen, and five years down the road this finally gets sorted out and a casino gets built. The hard way out is to actually look at the market … and if you do that, there is no way you issue this license.”
Harrah’s Philadelphia, from whence are heard premonitions of doom, would certainly agree. Pointing to a flattening of state gambling revenue after the opening of Valley 
Forge Casino Resort, “We are moving the same customers around and are not any better off,” says General Manager Ron Baumann. “The market hasn’t grown. It’s the same.” Characterizing the impulse to put three casinos within 12 miles of each other as insanity, Baumann says, “I don’t know how any reasonable person can think that adding another casino anywhere in Philadelphia will be a good thing … It will be 100 percent cannibalistic.” Not that stopped Gary Loveman from making a play for a riverfront site a few years ago. (Cordish’s projections show it generating $252 million [!] in new business and siphoning ‘only’ $88 million from Harrah’s and SugarHouse.
It appears inevitable that the process will wind up in court. If that’s the case, the very ex parte relationship between a PGCB attorney and the lead counsel for the Cordish group could play a major supporting role in the drama.
* Showstoppers has become Steve Wynn’s Showstoppers, which one hardly begrudges the man who’s got $10 million riding on it. Wynn is in a benevolent mood of late, his mind undoubtedly eased by the prospect of the ghetto around Wynncore evolving into new, James Packer and Genting Group resorts. Also, seeing an opportunity to justify higher ADRs, Wynn finally made a lifetime commitment to the beautiful links out back: “While I’m alive, I will never, ever develop the golf course. It is there to stay.”
Part of his reason was also that “what we gained [in tearing out the course] did not compensate for what we lost. In this case, we lost our suburban environment, that wonderful, wonderful experience that allows you to feel as if you’re not in a steel-and-concrete city.” It’s Steve Wynn’s perception of and commitment to those intangibles that will always set him on a plane apart from other casino developers.
