Connecticut‘s gaming tribes are confident they can beat MGM Springfield to the punch by a wide margin. How wide depends on 
whether they’re able to use a repurposed building (in which case we could be talking about the end of this year) or have to build the ground up, which could push the timeline out to December 2017. To hear Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino tell it, they’ve got no shortage of interested host communities, from Enfield to Windsor Locks, with Bradley International Airport in the mix. Of course, all this presupposes that the Legislature approves the host-community agreement, off-reservation gaming being terra incognita for the state.
Strengthening the tribes’ hand is their recent uptick in slot revenues, which enabled them to exceed the state’s projections for fiscal year 2016. (The state has penciled a steep decline into 2018, when MGM Springfield opens.) Although Gov. Dannel Malloy has said the enabling legislation “guarantees nothing,” Mohegan Tribe Chairman Kevin Brown remains optimistic, saying “I don’t see that the flags that have been raised will prevent this from happening.”
* While Forbes says MGM “has seen slow growth in its [Strip] gaming revenues and they are still below the pre-recession levels,” it predicts that MGM National Harbor will be a game-changer for the company. It projects that the Washington, D.C.,-area casino will lift 
MGM’s domestic revenues to $3.5 billion in the near terms and $4 billion by 2021. “We expect the growth rate to be in low single digits but higher than 2% in the coming years, primarily driven by the Maryland casino project and a better macroeconomic environment in the U.S., which will fuel increased disposable personal income. U.S. per capita disposable income is expected to grow from $37,410 in 2014 to $44,521 in 2021, according to a research by IBISWorld,” Forbes says. It adds that Maryland is the richest state per capita in the U.S., above the national average, creating a market for amenities that will go well above and beyond gambling. I don’t know of anybody in the casino world who doesn’t think MGM’s got a winner here.
