MGM has a new face in the state amid uncertainty
Five years to the month since we first heard noises about offreservation casinos run by the tribes, MGM resorts International has a new point person for Connecticut at a moment when it’s unclear what the General Assembly will do next.
All we know, all anyone knows, is that the tribes’ joint venture, MMCT, has a fierce and powerful backer in Sen. Cathy Osten, DSprague — and Osten will roll out a bill soon after the new year that might as well be written by the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes. That bill, giving the tribes exclusive rights to any new casinos, sports betting and online gambling, has momentum but it’s unclear whether it can pass in the 2020 session.
That’s the scene Ayesha Molino, a lowkey lawyer with significant experience in Congress, walks into. She heads the MGM Washington, D.C. lobbying office and just replaced the well liked Uri Clinton as the company’s face in Connecticut. Clinton, who also headed MGM’s Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway in Westchester County, is back in Las Vegas, where he lives, still with MGM.
Molino made some limited rounds to see folks at the state Capitol last week. We still don’t know whether she and MGM will push hard for MGM’s favored openbidding bill, calling for the state to take bids from all comers to decide whether and where to expand gambling — which passed the House in 2018. Molina isn’t giving strong signals either way.
“MGM has long been interested in Bridgeport as a potential market opportunity. We spent a long time on the ground developing those relationships,” said Molino, who joined MGM was chief counsel to former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, DNevada, the Senate Democratic leader from 2007 to 2017. “We remain interested in the state of Connecticut.”
The tribes and Osten have fought the openbidding bill loudly, saying it would cost jobs at two of the state’s top ten employers, Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun. MGM, for its part, has filed two lawsuits over the years, one still pending, to block the tribes’ and the state’s efforts to leave expanded gambling alone in the hands of the tribes.
After five full years of this standoff, there is absolutely no sign of a resolution. There’s no sign of cranes in East Windsor, where MMCT gained the right to build a casino in 2017 for the purpose of picking off patrons heading up to MGM Springfield.
The real action in 2020 will be over sports betting. Online gambling, which many people — count me in that group — consider a dangerous trend, has less support but would be part of any debate.
One thing is clear: No one — not the tribes and not MGM — is showing an overpowering zeal to build a large casino in Bridgeport, which many in the city want. Why should they? The tribes depend on customers from New York and western Connecticut at their overbuilt resorts in New London County and they may or may not have the financial power to expand.
MGM has 5,200 “gaming terminals” — slot machines in updated parlance — up the road at Empire City, with hopes for a full casino license there.
Osten’s bill appears to have the backing of some members of the Bridgeport delegation, who previously stood behind MGM. It’s similar to the version she sprung during the last week of the spring legislative session.
“I have more boots on the ground in support of it and I’m happy about that,” Osten said Monday. “I think people are starting to recognize the value of having two good partners to work with us in the state.”
The measure would give MMCT exclusive rights to sports betting, exclusive rights to online gaming and a license to build a casino in Bridgeport with no minimum size. It leaves out MGM and other commercial players, including the offtrack betting locations owned throughout the state by New Havenbased Sportech.
Osten’s bill would demand an investment by MMCT of just $100 million, which sounds like a lot of money but pales next to the $1 billion MGM spent on its Springfield casino and the $675 million the Las Vegasbased company proposed for Bridgeport Harbor two years ago.
If you think we’re going around in a very small circle here, getting nowhere, you’re right. In the long run, open bidding is the way to go not only because more competition is good, but in sports gambling at least, ingame betting requires companies with very deep resources.
But for now, giving up the tribes’ annual payments to the state — 25 percent of slot revenues — is hard to bear. To their credit, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun dropped by just 5 percent in fiscal 2019 compared with the average of the previous four years. That’s amazing considering both MGM Springfield and Wynn Resorts’ $2 billion Encore development opened up in the last 16 months.
“I Still think there needs to be a global resolution that minimizes the risk of litigation,” said Rep. Steve Stafstrom, DBridgeport, who guided the openbidding bill to its narrow win in the House in 2018. “Everybody needs to get into a room and be able to compromise more than they have to date. Some significant concessions need to be made on all sides.”
Negotiated compromise. That’s what Gov. Ned Lamont has been trying to achieve, what former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy couldn’t get and what we need. The tribes need to bend and the state needs to give up some money.
But don’t look for that to happen in 2020. Instead we may see Osten’s bill pass, with years of lawsuits to follow while neighboring states forge ahead.