MGM Walked Away From the Numbers Resorts World Is Now Putting Up
Resorts World NYC is on a $1.45 billion annual pace. MGM walked away from the same opportunity at Empire City.
The New York State Gaming Commission has now published three full weeks of revenue data since Resorts World New York City converted from a slots-only racino into a full commercial casino on April 28. The numbers are large enough to warrant careful examination. Statewide commercial casino gross gaming revenue for the week ending May 3 was $41.3 million. The following week, $40.1 million. For the week ending May 17, $41.8 million.
The week before the conversion, the four upstate commercial casinos combined for $13.4 million. That means Resorts World alone has been generating roughly $27 to $28 million per week as a full-scale casino, or more than twice the combined revenue of every other commercial casino in New York State.
A weekly run rate of $28 million projects to roughly $1.45 billion annually. As a racino, Resorts World generated $692 million in net win for fiscal year 2024-25. The conversion has, on very early evidence, doubled the property’s revenue. That number is also worth holding next to MGM Resorts’ October decision to withdraw its $2.3 billion bid for a Yonkers casino license. MGM said the economics had shifted enough that the investment no longer justified the return. Three weeks of Resorts World data suggest the economics may have shifted in the other direction.
Jumping Into Numbers Resorts World Is Actually Putting Up
The case for the conversion was always that adding 240 live table games to an existing 2,500-slot floor would significantly expand the property’s market. Resorts World’s executive summary to the Gaming Facility Location Board projected approximately $1.56 billion in net win at completion of the first phase. The early data is tracking close to that target, with one important caveat. Slot revenue has been strong, while table revenue has been below internal projections.
Maybank analyst Samuel Yin Shao Yang noted that tables produced approximately $4.9 million during the first six days, equivalent to about $3,400 per table per day. Maybank’s internal benchmark was closer to $5,400 per table per day. The shortfall in tables has been described as “underwhelming” compared with Macau-style expectations, but it has not prevented Resorts World from leading the state by a wide margin. The property is generating more revenue as a soft-opened casino with a partial table mix than the entire upstate market combined.
The early performance also matters for the broader fiscal picture. Resorts World paid a $600 million license fee. At current revenue and a blended tax rate that runs roughly 50% on slots and 30% on tables, the property is sending the state on the order of $13 to $14 million per week in gaming taxes. The license fee, on that math, is recovered in less than a year of new tax payments above what the racino was already generating. By just about any measurement, that’s a major win for Resorts World.
MGM’s Stated Reasons for Withdrawing the Yonkers License
MGM withdrew its Empire City application on October 14, 2025. The company’s stated reasons were straightforward. The competitive landscape had shifted, with four proposals clustered in a small geographic area. The state had revised the license term from a 30-year horizon to 15 years. Those two changes together, MGM said, no longer justified a $2.3 billion investment.
The license-term change is real and is obviously impactful. A 15-year asset depreciation schedule produces different return numbers than a 30-year schedule, particularly for a $2.3 billion development. The competitive clustering point is also defensible on paper. Three downstate casinos within roughly 20 miles of each other will eventually compete for an overlapping customer base. The 2025 economic impact study, commissioned by the state, projected a 76% revenue drop for upstate properties once all three downstate casinos are operating. The cannibalization effect is not hypothetical and is a realistic read by MGM.
The question is whether the math actually breaks the way MGM said it would. Resorts World is on track to generate roughly $1.5 billion in annual revenue from its first phase alone, against a $600 million license fee and a phased development program. MGM’s Empire City would have started from a similar revenue base (Empire City has generated about $5 billion in lifetime state taxes since 2006, and roughly $1.6 billion of that has come under MGM ownership since 2019). The investment was higher, but so was the existing business and customer base.
How Much Will Change When the Other Two Casinos Open?
The piece of MGM’s logic that holds up best is the competitive timing. Resorts World is currently the only resort in New York City without direct competition. Bally’s Bronx and Hard Rock Metropolitan Park were both awarded licenses in December 2025, but neither is open. Bally’s is targeting 2030. Hard Rock Metropolitan Park’s construction has already fallen more than five months behind its submitted schedule, with test piling for a key parking structure missing its January 2026 start date.
That timeline certainly matters. Resorts World will have at least three years of monopoly downstate operation, possibly four or more, given the Hard Rock delays. The first phase alone generates roughly $700 million in incremental annual revenue above what the racino was producing. Over a four-year monopoly window, the property captures somewhere in the range of $2.8 billion in incremental revenue before competitive pressure arrives.
MGM’s calculation assumed it would convert to a full casino around the same time as the other two greenfield projects. Under that assumption, Empire City would have faced direct competition almost from day one. The capture window would have been smaller, the cannibalization effect would have arrived sooner, and the 15-year license horizon would have included a meaningful number of years in which three or four casinos were splitting the market.
That assumption looks significantly weaker now. With Hard Rock delayed and Bally’s still years away from opening, the window to capture a monopoly for any existing racino with a phased conversion plan is substantial. MGM’s Empire City, like Resorts World, could have started phased operations on existing infrastructure. The fact that MGM did not run the same play raises a real question about whether the company misread its own competitive timing.
What the Current Math Says Regarding MGM’s Decision
The honest read is that MGM’s October decision looks worse with every weekly revenue report from Resorts World. The competitive cannibalization MGM cited as a reason to walk away will eventually arrive, but later than the company assumed. The 15-year license term is a real constraint, but Resorts World is on pace to recover its license fee in roughly one year of incremental tax payments, which suggests the term horizon was less of a deal-breaker than MGM should have made it out to be.
The state’s broader bet looks better, too. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had budgeted $1.8 billion in casino-related revenue from all three downstate licenses over 2026 through 2029. Resorts World alone is projecting $2.5 billion to the MTA over the same four years. If those projections hold, the downstate program will outperform its own budgeted economic impact by a meaningful margin, and it will do so primarily on the strength of a property that opened first and faced no real downstate competition for its initial years of operation.
MGM said the economics didn’t work for them. Three weeks of data say the economics really should have worked. Whether they continue to work once Bally’s and Hard Rock open is the open question. By then, MGM will have spent four years watching Resorts World cash checks on a license MGM voluntarily declined to bid against.
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