Wynn Resorts may have abandoned its plans to bid on a casino license in Philadelphia, but the five remaining applicants are no closer to following the Vegas operator out the door anytime soon.
The remaining applicants, which includes Penn National Gaming, the Goldenberg Group, Cordish Cos. and PHL Local Gaming L.L.C., remain active in the race and are hoping to secure the second casino license in the City of Brotherly Love.
The optimism does comes with a tiny dose of market reality, one that has seen revenues from Philly’s first casino, SugarHouse Casino, soften over the past year.
For what its worth, the company remains steadfast in its belief that Philadelphia can still be a good market for a casino, or multiple ones at that. “SugarHouse is strongly committed to Philadelphia, although we believe the market is showing signs of saturation,” the company’s CEO, Greg Carlin, said in a statement.
Earlier this week, Wynn Resorts pulled out of its bid for the second casino license in Philly, citing business opportunities elsewhere, as well as concerns of new competition in New York and the city’s flat performance over the past year as the main reasons for its withdrawal.
The company’s abrupt exit caught a lot of people by surprise but the five remaining applicants have all expressed their commitment to securing that casino license even with worries that the market is becoming saturated.
“We are extremely bullish about the market,” developer Ken Goldenberg of the Market8 project in Center City said, as quoted by the The Associated Press.
“We think we will become one of Philadelphia’s top five tourist attractions.”
Penn National Gaming is also confident about its chances and it has a casino proposal that’s just the right size for the market. Not too big. Not too small. “We believe the proposal we’ve put forth is right-sized for the market — unlike some of the pie-in-the-sky proposals some of the other applicants have presented,” Karen Bailey, spokeswoman for Penn National Gaming, said.
All five applicants are waiting on hearings the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board will hold to discuss their respective applications. A timetable for those hearings has been set for January next year, giving the developers and operators a little under two months to get their proposals in order.
One that thing that has become evidently clear is that Wynn Resorts won’t be part of those hearings anymore.
