Wynn Resorts fights back against online gambling push on Beacon Hill

The stance pits Wynn squarely against the state’s biggest homegrown gambling business, DraftKings. The Boston-based company is a key player in the Sports Betting Alliance industry group. So is the BetMGM joint venture backed by Entain and MGM Resorts, which operates a casino in Springfield.

Wynn’s resistance to online gambling comes as sports-betting is emerging as a powerful lobbying force. The Sports Betting Alliance looks as busy as ever on Beacon Hill. Outside of health care groups, no other trade association spent more on state lobbying in the first six months of this year. Its spending rose to $255,000, from $165,000 in the same period last year. And that’s not including an additional $156,000 spent by DraftKings directly, compared with $60,000 a year ago.

Part of the reason? The iGaming push.

So far, seven states have adopted iGaming, including Connecticut and Rhode Island. DraftKings would like to see its home state become the eighth. Rebecca London, senior government affairs manager for DraftKings, noted that her company employs more than 1,300 people in Massachusetts, a number that she said would likely grow if the company gets to offer iGaming here.

London told lawmakers that online gambling, as presented in Muradian’s bill, could bring in $170 million to $200 million a year in new state tax revenue. She added that a different iGaming bill, championed by Senator Paul Feeney of Foxborough and reviewed by another legislative committee, could generate up to $275 million a year. (The bills have different tax structures, and Muradian’s bill requires all online operators to work with a brick-and-mortar casino, while Feeney’s does not.)

London also made the case that legalizing online gaming would help put a lid on all the black-market betting that’s happening in the state today. At least with the DraftKings app, she said, there are consumer protections in place, such as support for “problem gamblers.”

In the Wynn letter, signed by executive director of government relations Eileen McAnneny, the company pushes back on the points that London and her allies made on Thursday. (McAnneny formerly led the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.) Gambling on your phone, she writes, is far more addictive than gambling in person. Think nonstop action, available anywhere you can get cell service.

Those attractive tax revenue numbers, McAnneny says, don’t take into account the potential loss of brick-and-mortar gaming taxes, or associated lost hotel and restaurant taxes. The Retailers Association of Massachusetts agreed to sign on in opposition, because of the potential harm it could do to member businesses. Unions are opposed, too, citing job losses in states where iGaming has been adopted: Hundreds, if not thousands, of workers connected with Encore, MGM Springfield, and Plainridge Park could be affected.

McAnneny didn’t mention Wynn’s $400 million expansion plan for Encore. But legalized iGaming in Massachusetts could give the higher-ups in Nevada yet another reason to keep that project on the shelf.

Someone from Encore did testify on the online gambling issue on Thursday — representing Unite Here Local 26, not the casino company. Karen Marzo, a slot-machine attendant, said she moved here in 2019, the year Encore opened, for her job. Her department, she warned, would be one of the first parts of the casino to experience layoffs if Muradian’s bill gets enacted.

Representative Carole Fiola, the committee’s House chair, assured Marzo and others in the room that employment levels would be a crucial part of the calculus for lawmakers to decide how to approach the bill. This thinking might not work in DraftKings’ favor in Fiola’s case; she recalled reading that a DraftKings leader boasted about how it’s using technology to supplant certain jobs.

It took years for state lawmakers to embrace casino gambling. Finally, working with Governor Deval Patrick, they passed a law in 2011 allowing for three resort-casino licenses (Encore, MGM, and a third still-unfilled slot for Southeastern Mass.) and one slot-machine parlor (Plainridge). Sports-betting didn’t get approved until 2022, following a crucial Supreme Court decision four years earlier. Then lawmakers agreed to let the Massachusetts Lottery go online in 2024.

In each case, extra revenue for the state’s constantly draining coffers was a selling point. In September alone, casinos brought in $27 million in taxes, mostly from Encore. Sports-betting added another $10 million, half from bets placed with DraftKings.

Yes, these are lean times on Beacon Hill. Will budgetary pressures be strong enough to prompt legislative leaders to go back to the gambling well again?

Maybe iGaming would draw out younger gamblers to play, via DraftKings or other apps, who wouldn’t think of trekking to Everett to spend their money. Or maybe it would keep too many Encore regulars home, sitting on their couch, tapping away at their phones. It sure seems like a roll of the dice.

Jon Chesto can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.