Pressure to legalize Internet gambling has emerged from an unexpected quarter — Massachusetts. State Sen. Bruce Tarr (R) 
has proposed a bill that would allow Web casinos to piggyback onto existing brick-and-mortar ones. True, Wynn Resorts is averse to ‘Net betting and MGM Resorts International is indifferent, but we haven’t heard from the Mashpee Wampanoags and Penn National Gaming is ready to jump in with both feet. “We support the authorization of Internet gaming to the extent it protects the economic investment the brick-and-mortar casinos have made in the state and the jobs we’ve created,” said Penn’s spokesman, Eric Schippers. Depending on how much clout Penn wields at the statehouse, Massachusetts could leapfrog several other states which are pondering Web wagering at a snail’s pace.
Speaking of the Wampanoag, the tribe is treating its casino project as a fait accompli. It is working with two Taunton businesses to help them find new sites away from Liberty & Union Industrial Park, where the tribe intends to build Project First Light. One businessman, OMNIlife science Operations Senior Vice President Michael Duquette, says his company is “90% there” to working out a deal whereby the Mashpee tribe would provide OMNI with financial aid for relocation.
No such luck for Communications Construction Group. “I’ve asked me to help me out, and they will not,” said CCG Regional Director of Operations Frank Leahy. “I feel we’re getting a raw deal.” 
He’s got a lease that runs through May but the Wampanoag want him out by the end of March, which gives you some idea of the urgency behind Project First Light. A third company is debating whether or not to “play hardball” with the tribe, confident that it can’t be forced out of its site. Since the Wampanoag would pay an annual $8 million to Taunton, these small businessmen probably shouldn’t look to City Hall for tea and sympathy.
* According MGM Senior Vice President Tom Mikulich, skill-based slots should start hitting casinos by late summer of 2016. “Once it catches fire, you will see a land rush,” he said, in a block-that-metaphor moment. (Moody’s Investor Service thinks it will be sooner but we believe they’re underestimating the lab-testing process.) However, “a land rush” is exactly what the manufacturing sector both wants and badly needs. And for all the talk of millennials and the resurgence of table games, slots still represent 61% of Nevada casino revenues.
MGM, with several big casino projects in train, is expected to be an early adopter. As for companies that are standing pat on expansion, this might finally be time for the big replacement cycle for which manufacturers have spent years waiting. Ironically, some will have an element of Class II gambling, in that they are being designed to allow players to compete against one another as well as the machine. They won’t be a needle-mover in Macao, where slot play represents only 5% of the market. What they may do, suggests Scientific Games Senior Vice President Bryan Kelly, is bring some new competitors into the manufacturing-and-design sector: Video-game developers like Electronic Arts could find the new slots playing right into their wheelhouse.
* If there’s one casino operator who can be sanguine about the dire 
situation in Macao, it’s Sheldon Adelson. His not-so-secret weapon? Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, which is not only capturing runaway VIP players from China but is also strategically positioned to draw from Malaysia, Thailand and India. When the Marina Bay Sands construction budget ran way out of control, it looked like Singapore would be Adelson’s undoing but, as is often the case, Sheldon is having the last laugh.
* It’s ‘gather ye rosebuds while yet ye may’ time for Atlantic City‘s surviving casinos. New Jersey Democrats are starting to crank up the legislative machinery that would put a question on the 2016 ballot to expand casino gambling to other parts of the Garden State. The governing idea is that the new casino revenues could be used to prop up Atlantic City — a perverse concept but one that seems to have a lot of traction in Trenton.
