Resorts World NYC Opens Live Tables After a High-Tax Bet

Resorts World New York City opened live table games on April 28, 2026, the first legal blackjack, craps, baccarat, and roulette in the five boroughs. Genting converted its video-lottery hall beside Aqueduct Racetrack after winning one of three downstate licenses in December 2025.

The bid that sealed it was a speed-and-tax wager: open months after the award, pay the steepest rates in the field, and sit alone as New York City’s only full casino until the other two licensees open around 2030. Tables are running. A $5.5 billion campus is in the ground. The same 56 percent slot tax is now a fight over horse-racing payments.

Genting Paid the Highest Tax Rate to Go First

New York voters approved up to seven casinos statewide in November 2013. Four went upstate. In 2022 the Legislature set a new path for the last three downstate licenses, with community votes and zoning finished before the Gaming Facility Location Board could score a bid.

The board issued its request for applications on January 3, 2023. On June 27, 2025 it took eight filings, after setting a $500 million minimum license fee and a $500 million minimum capital spend. Community advisory committees had until September 30, 2025 to pass a bid by a two-thirds vote. Four projects cleared that bar: Bally’s Bronx, Hard Rock Metropolitan Park, MGM’s Yonkers racino, and Resorts World New York City, whose Queens committee voted yes on September 25, 2025.

MGM pulled its Yonkers application on October 14, 2025, the same day the last three groups filed tax rates. Hard Rock Metropolitan Park, the Steve Cohen and Hard Rock plan next to Citi Field, bid 25 percent on slots and 10 percent on tables. Bally’s Bronx bid 30 percent and 10 percent. Resorts World bid 56 percent on slots and 30 percent on tables, matching the video-lottery rate it already paid as a racino.

The board, chaired by Vicki Been, selected all three remaining applicants on December 1, 2025. Its selection paper said Resorts World would be the only operating downstate casino until the others open, likely around 2030, and that speed plus the highest tax rate of the applicants were the factors that sent Genting New York LLC to the New York State Gaming Commission. The same paper flagged Genting companies’ record of projects delivered late or over budget and of mixed results at some U.S. properties.

The Commission awarded the licenses on December 15, 2025. Resorts World’s award is a 15-year gaming facility license that starts when an operation certificate is issued and can be renewed for 10 years. The fee due by December 31, 2025 was $500 million. Robert DeSalvio, president of Genting Americas East, had told the board the Queens site was the only bid that could expand in 90 days and send new money to the MTA and public schools over the next four years.

THE LICENSE TIMELINE

1. June 27, 2025: The board receives eight downstate applications.
2. September 25, 2025: The Queens Community Advisory Committee votes yes on Resorts World.
3. October 14, 2025: MGM withdraws; the last three bidders file tax rates.
4. December 1, 2025: The Location Board selects all three remaining projects.
5. December 15, 2025: The Gaming Commission awards the licenses.
6. April 28, 2026: Live tables open at Resorts World New York City.
7. June 28, 2026: Aqueduct stages its last live race.
8. July 22, 2026: Genting breaks ground on Phase Two of the $5.5 billion build.

That sequence is the whole bet. The other two winners still have to build from empty land. Genting already had a working floor, a hotel, and a staff on Rockaway Boulevard.

Live Tables Opened in Queens on April 28

The third floor opened with more than 240 live tables covering blackjack, craps, baccarat, and roulette. Nas rolled the first dice at the ceremony, with Lim Kok Thay, executive chairman of the Genting Group, on the floor. Dealers were new hires. The company said the launch added 1,250 jobs, including 950 table-game dealers, and took the headcount to more than 2,200, with a summer target above 2,700.

New York City has never seen anything like what we’re planning for April 28. Once the Gaming Commission’s final testing is complete, live table games will be open and operating right here in Queens for the first time in the history of New York City.

Robert DeSalvio, President, Genting Americas East

The public target during the bid had been March 2026, a date the board itself called ambitious. Tables went live on April 28 instead, still months after the license vote and years before the Bronx and Willets Point projects. Genting Malaysia, in a May filing, called the April 28 start ahead of schedule.

On July 21 the property reopened a first-floor bank with 1,400 more slot machines. The company now lists nearly 4,000 slots and more than 240 live tables. The full plan is 6,000 slots and 800 tables, or 10,800 gaming positions, on a 500,000-square-foot floor.

Aqueduct’s Last Race Cleared the 72-Acre Site

The casino sits on the 72-acre Aqueduct campus in South Ozone Park, at 110-00 Rockaway Boulevard. Live racing had shared that ground since 1894. Live racing has ended at Aqueduct as of June 28, 2026, the Big A’s final card after 132 years. The last race was named It Was a Good Run, with a 5:44 p.m. post. Assume Nothing won it under Jaime Rodriguez.

The New York Racing Association moved the downstate calendar to the rebuilt Belmont Park, which opened September 18, 2026. Aqueduct kept simulcast betting through September 7, then shut. NYRA had to give up the Aqueduct lease as part of the Belmont rebuild financing. Construction of Resorts World’s next buildings on the old track site started in July.

The swap is the cost of the conversion. Horseplayers lost a winter track. Genting gained acreage for hotels, an arena, and a plaza beside a casino that no longer has to share the property with a live meet. Racing still takes a cut of the tax argument, which is why the closed track has not left the story.

What the $5.5 Billion Campus Adds

Genting’s physical plan is a $5.5 billion build on the existing one-million-square-foot property, adding about two million square feet of gaming, entertainment, dining, retail, and meeting space. A separate $2 billion community package, pledged in the bid, includes up to 50,000 workforce housing units across the five boroughs, a $100 million infrastructure fund, and the Kenny “The Jet” Smith Sports and Media Academy, named for the Queens-born NBA analyst.

The Hyatt Regency JFK Airport at Resorts World New York City already has 400 rooms, opened in 2021. Phase Two adds a 400-room Hyatt tower. A 1,200-room Crockfords hotel is slated later, for 2,000 rooms in all. The entertainment piece is a 7,000-seat multipurpose arena. The bid also listed more than 7,000 parking spaces, most of them covered, and more than 12 acres of new public green space.

The Location Board scored a narrower $3.3 billion capital-investment figure under its application rules and said only about 1 percent of that spend was expected to go to Queens firms, a gap it told the company to close. The board’s March 2026 findings put video-lottery shutdown at the end of March 2026, casino play in April, the gaming floor done by 2029, and the hotel, venue, and extra restaurants by January 2031.

The company says the full expansion will create 10,000 jobs, including about 5,000 union construction jobs. It already employs about 2,500 people, more than half of them Queens residents, and says it has spent more than $1.1 billion on the site since opening in 2011. Average visits are put at five million a year. Since 2011, Resorts World says it has sent more than $5 billion to the state’s public education system.

Bally’s and Hard Rock Are Years Behind

The other two licenses went to projects that still have to be built. Bally’s is at Ferry Point in the Bronx, on the former golf course site. Hard Rock Metropolitan Park is on parking land at Willets Point, next to Citi Field, with Mets owner Steve Cohen as the local partner. Both have pointed to openings around 2030. Until those doors open, every legal live table in New York City is in Ozone Park.

THE THREE DOWNSTATE LICENSEES

Caesars, Wynn, Las Vegas Sands, and others left the race before the final three. Manhattan and Brooklyn bids died at community boards. The Location Board’s consultants projected more than $4 billion in gaming tax from Resorts World from 2027 to 2036, about $2 billion each for the MTA and education, before counting losses at other New York gaming sites. Those numbers assumed the 56 percent slot rate held.

The 56 Percent Rate Is Now a Fight Over Racing Money

The Commission still publishes Resorts World’s rates as 56 percent on slots and 30 percent on tables, with retail sports wagering in the table bucket. Hard Rock and Bally’s stay at 25/10 and 30/10. For those two, the Commission splits tax 50/50 between the MTA and education aid. For Resorts World it lists an 80 percent education share until a hold-harmless amount is met, then a larger MTA take. The public table does not list a racing line.

Resorts World’s application said the 56 percent slot rate was “inclusive of racing support.” Spokesman Stefan Friedman said in June that the company had been consistent in filings and testimony that the 56 percent would fund the MTA, the education fund, and the horse-racing industry, with the 30 percent table tax on top for the MTA and education. After the Legislature passed a bill letting the Commission send money straight to racing, Friedman said the company was grateful the distribution path had been fixed.

The stacked-rate fight did not end there. The company has argued that paying racing support on top of 56 percent would produce an effective 72 percent slot tax, and it has raised the prospect of pulling back the $3.3 billion capital program the board scored. Rep. Gregory Meeks and nine other local lawmakers asked the Commission to confirm that racing support sits inside the 56 percent, saying the uncertainty put private spend and jobs at risk. State officials have treated the other two casinos’ racing payments as separate, and those operators have not made a public issue of it.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Posted rates: The Commission lists Resorts World at 56 percent on slots and 30 percent on tables, the rates the board used when it picked the winners.
• Early payments: In the first 12 weeks after April 28, the company says it paid $170 million in casino taxes and racing support, up more than 30 percent from the same stretch a year earlier.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Inclusive language: It is not settled in public whether the Commission accepted the bid line that racing support sits inside the 56 percent.
• Build risk: A halt of the $3.3 billion capital program is a company warning, not a filed cancellation.

The louder problem is the math the bid locked in. Genting won by offering more than double Hard Rock’s slot rate. That spread is the cash the state counted on, and it is the bill the operator is now trying to keep from growing.

Phase Two Is Already in the Ground

On July 22, 2026, less than three months after the table opening, Genting broke ground on Phase Two. Lim said the company was keeping every commitment in the state proposal and running ahead of schedule on work outside the existing building. DeSalvio tied the shovel to the first 12 weeks of live tables, when the property posted $170 million in casino taxes and racing support.

In less than 3 months after opening our doors as the first casino in New York City’s history, we are already moving towards a day when the city will have a first-of-its-kind integrated resort.

Lim Kok Thay, Executive Chairman, Genting Group, July 22, 2026 groundbreaking

With more machines and more tables due by year end, the company says those payments can grow toward $1 billion a year, split as $425 million for education, $425 million for the MTA, and $150 million for racing. Those are operator targets, not Commission forecasts.

PHASE TWO ON THE 72-ACRE CAMPUS

• Hyatt tower: A second 400-room hotel stacked onto the current Hyatt Regency.
• Crockfords: 1,200 luxury rooms that bring the campus to 2,000 keys.
• Arena: A 7,000-seat hall for concerts, sports, and community events.
• Academy: The Kenny “The Jet” Smith sports and media complex, moved to mid-campus and dated three years earlier than the original pledge.
• Plaza and garage: A new central plaza and a parking structure to feed the extra floor space.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. called the groundbreaking a jobs and entertainment delivery for Queens families. Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato pointed at the academy as a path into industries local students rarely see. State Sens. James Sanders Jr. and Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., who chairs the racing and gaming committee, framed the spend as a follow-through after 15 years on the site. Addabbo had said on opening day that Resorts World was a proven commodity and one of the most successful gaming sites in the country.

The New York State MWBE program scheduled a September 28, 2026 webinar on contracting for the expansion, a sign the next wave of spend is being bid out while the tax file is still open. The empty years until around 2030 are the prize Genting paid 56 percent to win. Whether the hotels and the 7,000-seat room rise on that same clock now depends on how the Commission reads a sentence about racing support that was in the bid from the start.