QUEENS — At 4 p.m. on Oct. 14, New York’s casino contest moved from renderings to arithmetic. Three remaining contenders, Resorts World at Aqueduct in Queens, Bally’s pursuit at Ferry Point in the Bronx, and the Hard Rock–backed plan beside Citi Field, delivered the supplemental filings the state demanded, a technical addendum that forces bidders to replace slogan with spreadsheet. The filings cap a month that also saw a decisive Queens panel advance the Citi Field district and put Manhattan’s ambitions firmly in the rearview after a run of borough-wide rejections.
The supplemental step is not cosmetic. New York’s Gaming Facility Location Board required an amended executive summary with proposed tax rates, a refreshed revenue model built to be stress-tested, and a market-impact analysis that looks a decade ahead. The instructions, set out in the board’s own Supplement #2 guidance memo, were blunt about the stakes and the clock: deliver by the Oct. 14 “Supplement Return Date,” or risk being left out. The board’s public timeline is just as unforgiving; it says it expects to issue recommendations by Dec. 1, 2025, with final licensure by Dec. 31, a cadence still posted on the official portal.
The ground shifted in the hours before the deadline. MGM Resorts, which had been widely seen as a front-runner to convert its Yonkers racino, withdrew. The company cited revised economics and a shorter-than-expected license term. Rather than let rumor stand in for record, it issued an official statement confirming the exit. The departure narrowed the field to three bidders for as many licenses, an arithmetic that looks simple on paper but leaves regulators with real choices. The board is under no obligation to award all permits if the numbers or the politics wobble.
From concept art to cash flow
For much of the year the conversation tilted toward land use and spectacle: stadium adjacencies, concert halls, public lawns plotted over asphalt. The supplement pulls that camera back to revenue, tax rates, and resilience. Each bidder had to specify rates at or above the state’s floors and run scenarios that show how their numbers hold up, not only if all three licenses are issued, but if just one is. That modeling is designed to answer two questions that drive Albany’s decision: how much will the state and city receive, and what happens to existing gaming venues if a new license is awarded nearby.
That reframing suits the operator already taking bets in Queens. Resorts World New York City, which runs the city’s busiest gaming facility in South Ozone Park, used the filing to stress speed to revenue and to sharpen its price. In a late-evening release, the company described a broader integrated resort and a license-fee pledge above the state minimum. Local reporting also puts a marker on timeline: if licensed this year, an initial expansion could arrive as soon as midsummer 2026, according to a QNS dispatch that sketches out construction phasing and hiring.
Across the Grand Central Parkway, Steve Cohen’s plan has worked to turn what was once a hard stop, parkland status, into a solved problem. Albany advanced enabling legislation to remove the parkland designation from the Citi Field parking lots, the legal step that clears the site’s basic path to development; the bill is filed as S7121A. With that hurdle lowered, the sponsors have leaned into their non-gaming pitch: a district built around live music, hospitality partners, and programmed open space, described at length on the project’s official site and in a Hard Rock executive summary in the state’s filing repository. That destination logic is now paired with the same actuarial homework the other bidders must supply: proposed rates, Year-Three revenue, and an analysis of spillover effects on competitors.
In the Bronx, Bally’s is arguing geography and jobs. The site, at the city’s northern edge, would tap a different commuter base via the Throggs Neck and nearby highways, the company says, and would spread hiring and vendor spend into a borough that has often watched megaprojects unfold elsewhere. While critics point to traffic and the site’s prior branding, the project cleared a key local threshold: the Bronx Community Advisory Committee accepted amendments and voted to advance the bid, according to the state’s committee page and the published minutes.
Why the numbers matter now
The mechanics of the supplemental filing are a window into how the state intends to score this race. The amended executive summary caps rhetoric at four pages and demands specifics: proposed taxes on slot revenue and other games, license-fee assumptions, and updated pro formas tied to defined market scenarios. The requirement that applicants model a “single-license” world is particularly telling; it forces teams to show that their business survives without relying on the halo of an adjacent casino’s advertising or foot traffic. It also gives the board a common basis for comparing three projects that differ in maturity (an incumbent VLT operator vs. from-scratch builds), in program (casino-led vs. entertainment-led), and in location.
Speed is not a small factor. The board’s public calendar, recommendations by Dec. 1 and licensure by Dec. 31, overlaps with a budget cycle already penciling in license-fee revenue. The bid that can open earliest almost by definition front-loads state and city receipts. But speed without staying power is a false economy. That is why regulators require a Year-Three lens, the point at which casino markets typically stabilize, and why they ask for market-impact modeling that includes cannibalization of upstate and Long Island venues. The mandate is spelled out in the supplement instructions, which are, in places, less a request than an audit plan.
Queens vs. Queens vs. the Bronx
Aqueduct’s incumbent. Resorts World’s model promises a fast flip from a video-lottery racino to a full commercial casino. The operating spine is in place: workforce, surveillance and compliance back-of-house, utilities and parking that already serve large weekend peaks. The company frames its bid as a fiscal accelerant — an early injection of gaming taxes paired with a pledge to invest in hotel rooms, meeting space, and a sizable performance venue to lengthen stays and raise non-gaming spend. It is the most “known-quantity” play in the field: fewer land-use unknowns, fewer permitting traps, and a customer database that can be activated the day tables switch on.
Willets Point’s destination bet. The Citi Field proposal wraps a casino hotel and live-entertainment program into an emerging sports cluster that includes U.S. Open tennis next door and an MLS stadium rising in Willets Point. The pitch emphasizes how pre- and post-game programming could fill a year-round calendar — a district less dependent on repeat local play and more tuned to tourist spend and big-ticket events. The local politics, once fraught, shifted with the parkland bill and with the 6-0 Community Advisory Committee vote in Queens. What remains is the financial test: tax-rate discipline, credible Year-Three revenue, and evidence that a destination model won’t simply draw from the same Queens wallet already loyal to Aqueduct.
Ferry Point’s north-city pole. The Bronx plan sells itself as complementary rather than duplicative, pulling a drive-in audience across bridges and from Westchester and Connecticut. Its political durability has been stress-tested — opponents have organized with real stamina — yet the state’s committee process produced a 5–1 vote to advance. For regulators, the homework is to probe whether this site adds a new catchment without hollowing out existing venues, and whether its construction and operating timelines are credible in a city where schedules rarely behave.
How New York insulated the endgame
By scripting a rigid addendum with standardized worksheets and source-document backups, the state has blunted the most volatile kind of lobbying. Applicants can still argue values and vision, but they cannot wish away the spreadsheet. The approach is a reaction to a two-year arc of public theater: rally-rich rollouts, protest lines outside hearings, and plenty of speculative modeling in glossy decks. The supplement places a number on what had been hunches — how quickly money hits classrooms and transit, whether “destination” is measurable beyond a press release, and what happens to a Long Island slots parlor when Queens adds tables. It also acknowledges the reality that community sign-off is the hinge, not a hoop, a lesson driven home when Times Square and the Far West Side bids were turned back.
If the process has sometimes felt like a slow-motion referendum on the future of entertainment in New York, the supplement is the first week in which hard policy meets harder math. The board will examine whether aggressive rate promises are sustainable, or whether they would starve the programming that keeps casinos competitive in a market where customers can choose Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or a tribal property a few hours away. It will look at whether “entertainment districts” are backed by enforceable partners and schedules — the kind that appear in filings like Hard Rock’s executive summary — or whether they are marketing varnish.
What regulators will test
Rate discipline vs. reinvestment. A license fee above the minimum flatters a press release and pleases budget writers, but it raises a secondary question: will margins support the reinvestment that keeps the calendar full? New York’s history with arenas and casinos suggests that a venue’s cultural relevance is a function of booking power and constant refresh, a fact the board will weigh as it reads rate proposals and capital plans beside pro formas.
Overlapping trade areas. Two proposals in Queens, a third just a bridge away, creates the risk of cannibalization. The modeling the state requested is designed to quantify that risk, not elide it. The question is whether the Citi Field plan can pull fresh visitor nights and concerts tied to baseball, tennis, and soccer — rather than merely divide repeat play — and whether Aqueduct’s advantage in speed and incumbency produces earlier, bigger tax flows without compressing the regional market.
Credible schedules. Every bid now carries a schedule that is both sales pitch and public promise. The board will examine claims of early opening against labor availability and supply chains for gaming equipment, and it will treat “phase one” vows with the skepticism New Yorkers reserve for ribbon-cuttings. Local coverage has already flagged midsummer 2026 as a plausible first step for one Queens build-out, a reminder that time is a form of currency in this race — a point documented by community reporters who follow the jobs calendar.
Proof of life beyond the floor. The non-gaming promise — music halls, food halls, parks that don’t feel like buffers — will be tested for enforceability. Partners with signed letters, curators with followings, programming calendars aligned with baseball and tennis seasons: these are the specifics that turn a brochure into a district. The filings on nycasinos.ny.gov are rich with those details for readers willing to trawl PDFs. They will help determine whether promises of “destination” resolve into something a visitor can buy a ticket for in February.
A narrowed field, not an easy decision
It is tempting to read the MGM exit as a prelude to three automatic awards. That is not how this board writes endings. Licenses can be staggered; conditions can be layered; permits can be withheld if economics look brittle. The state can decide that two is safer than three in Year One, or that one opens while two are conditioned on specific milestones. The supplement gives the board the leverage to insist on those guardrails. It also gives the public a clearer sense of the trade: upfront fees and tax rates on one side, construction and operating promises on the other.
New York designed this process to be tedious for a reason. The city’s last decade is crowded with announcements that did not survive first contact with zoning or budgets. By forcing bidders to price their promises and file them on the state’s site, the board created a record that will outlast this week’s headlines — a set of documents that can be measured against what opens, who is hired, and which trains actually benefit. In that light, the supplement is less a hoop than the thing itself.
However the board sequences the awards, this much is already settled: the downstate casino story is no longer a Manhattan parlor game. The action is in Queens and the Bronx, and the argument is moving from cable hits to cash flow. If the past two years were about who could command the loudest rally, the next six weeks are about who can back a claim. The state has the math it asked for. Now it has to decide which version of New York, fast, sure, or spectacular, pays best.