Massachusetts residents won’t vote on a ballot question Tuesday that would allow a new casino to open in Rhode Island. But the casino executives behind the effort have the Bay State inmind.
If voters in both Rhode Island and its would-be host community of Tiverton give the go-ahead, the casino would be located less than two football fields away from the Massachusetts border. The proposal is a sign of how the regional gambling market is adjusting to the competition slowly coming online in Massachusetts.
Twin River Management Group, which owns both of Rhode Island’s existing gaming facilities, would open the Tiverton casino in 2018 and close its Newport Grand slots parlor in the process. John Taylor, the company’s chairman, said the Tiverton casino would be more accessible to customers from Southeastern Massachusetts, who represent a sizable portion of Newport Grand’s customers.“We’re positioning that casino to be closer to the markets that we serve,” he said. “Being in Tiverton is much more proximate to where those customers are coming from.” Five years after Massachusetts legalized casinos, regional gambling companies and neighboring states have been forced to rethink their competitive approach. Casino operators don’t want to lose Massachusetts customers who have long gone south to gamble, and state officials want to keep the gambling tax revenue flowing. “We all understand this is a chess board and the players try to arrange the pieces to the best of their advantage,” said Matthew Wojcik, the town administrator of Tiverton, which has a population of about 15,000.A similar dynamic is at play in Connecticut, where two large resort casinos already operate in the southeastern part of the state. The two Native American tribes behind those facilities hope to jointly operate another venue in the north-central part of Connecticut as a check on the upcoming MGM Resorts casino in Springfield. Advertisement Massachusetts opened its first slots parlor in 2015 in Plainville and two resort casinos are slated to open in the coming years, in Springfield and Everett. Another casino from the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe may also eventually open in Taunton, just a 20-minute drive from the proposed Tiverton site. And on Tuesday, Massachusetts voters will decide whether to allow for a second slots parlor.Twin River has not been coy; protectionism is front and center in the push for the Tiverton casino. The pro-casino campaign, backed by millions of dollars from Twin River, is called Citizens to Create Jobs and Protect Revenue. Rhode Island’s governor, Gina Raimondo, supports the project as a means of “protecting our state’s third-largest revenue source,” according to a statement provided by a spokesman.Even the project’s opponents — a grass-roots Tiverton group — agree that Rhode Island risks losing gaming revenue to Massachusetts if the casino is not approved. Mike Silvia, an organizer for No Tiverton Casino, said the likelihood of lost funds is part of his group’s message: the state should stop relying so much on revenue from casinos.“The problem is that we’re in this situation where we’re dependent on this industry,” he said.The proposed casino is modest. Its design was inspired by the small town’s library and the facility would be hidden from the highway, a far cry from the big and glitzy image associated with major resort casinos. It would feature 1,000 slot machines, 32 gaming tables, and an 84-room hotel. At $75 million, its estimated cost pales in comparison to the planned $2.1 billion Wynn Boston Harbor resort in Everett that is selling itself as an international destination. Even the Plainville slots parlor cost $250 million. Still, Twin River estimates the project would support at least 550 jobs and create $20 million in new state tax revenue.Elaine Driscoll, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, said officials considered out-of-state facilities, including the possibility of new casinos, while licensing venues in Massachusetts. “The commission strategically awarded licenses to only the strongest gaming companies and we are confident that our chosen licensees can prosper despite any regional competitive pressure,” she said.The Tiverton project would most directly compete with the proposed Mashpee Wampanoag casino in Taunton, which is not licensed by the state because it is planned for sovereign land. The tribe broke ground on the $1 billion casino earlier this year, but work has paused due to ongoing litigation; its timeline is now unclear. The tribe declined to comment about the Tiverton vote. Clyde Barrow, a University of Texas professor who studies New England gambling, said that if the Tiverton casino opens first, the tribe could go in one of two directions: It could scale back its casino due to increased market pressure, or it could double down on a much larger facility in an attempt to overpower its competitor.Rhode Island has prepared for the Massachusetts competition for several years. In 2012, a year after Massachusetts legalized casinos, Rhode Island voters allowed Twin River’s Lincoln facility to host table games after previously only offering slots.The Lincoln casino now competes with Massachusetts’s first gambling venue, Plainridge Park Casino, a slots parlor in Plainville. In Plainridge’s first full year, Twin River saw its slot business fall by about 6 percent, less than the company’s 10- to 12-percent projection, according to Twin River’s Taylor. He partially credits the presence of table games.The previous owners of the Newport Grand slots parlor, Twin River’s other gambling facility, weren’t so lucky, however. They failed to win voter approval to offer table games. Months after Newport voters said no in 2014, Twin River announced its acquisition of the slots parlor in early 2015. The company unveiled the Tiverton plan shortly thereafter.Adam Vaccaro can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Follow him on Twitter at @adamtvaccaro.| < Prev | Next > |
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