Editorial: Sorry, house rules

Did you hear the one about the kindly casino dealer who, when a gambler’s luck turned out to be not quite as good as he’d hoped, told him he could play for free? No? Neither did we.

It’s probably the most fundamental rule of casino gambling: You pay your money, you take your chance.

Casinos took their chance on upstate New York, making all sorts of agreements and promises to share the riches that would flow. Now, with their luck nowhere near as good as they had probably hoped, at least one operator, Rivers Casino and Resort in Schenectady, wants to change the rules. And Gov. Andrew Cuomo appears willing to let them.

The Legislature should say no to this, and to any other attempt to change the terms of casino licenses.

We don’t argue that this has been an especially bad time for casinos. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the state to order them to shut down last March, and they didn’t reopen until September. That’s six months’ worth of business, gone.

The reality is, though, that a lot of businesses endured the past year without much if any sales or other revenue, especially in the entertainment business. Not all of them were owned, as Rivers is, by Rush Street Gaming, whose affiliated companies include Rush Street Interactive, which had 2020 revenue of $278.5 million, and recently reported $255 million in cash and cash equivalents. A poor, down-on-its-luck operation this is not.

Among Rivers’ various obligations, the casino has to pay 3.5 percent of its revenue from video lottery terminals toward a purse fund for the Saratoga Harness Horseperson's Association, which represents owners, trainers, breeders, caretakers and drivers of harness racing standardbreds. The payments were intended to help make up for the loss of revenue for the fund that Saratoga Gaming and Raceway was expected to sustain at its VLT parlor because of competition from Rivers. The fund goes toward racing fees, a minimum harness driver pay, a state-mandated manure program, and health insurance, as well as enhanced race purses. Since 2017, Rivers’ payments have ranged from $2.9 million to $3.9 million.

Rivers, though, stopped making the payments last year, and actually still owes the association for a payment that predates the pandemic. The governor’s budget would have it make that first quarter of 2020 payment of $825,000, and then pay nothing until six months after all restrictions associated with the pandemic are lifted, whenever that may be.

Rush Street says it’s dealing not just with losses from the pandemic, but with poor performance even before last March. That was surely no surprise. Well before New York approved casino gambling in 2013, the Northeast casino market was being saturated. Gambling houses in New Jersey were either going bust or asking for bailouts in the name of saving jobs. By 2018, New York’s brand new casinos were already demanding tax breaks, claiming the market wasn’t as good as they’d supposedly hoped.

That’s too bad, but it isn’t the state’s job to bail out a wealthy corporation that went into this investment eyes open and that can certainly weather this storm. Like even the most amateur gambler, Rush Street well knows: You pay your money, you take your chance, you play the hand you’re dealt.