After years of lobbying and political maneuvering, casinos are finally coming to New York City. In December, the New York State Gaming Commission approved three casino licenses for Metropolitan Park in Queens, Bally’s Bronx, and Resorts World New York City in Queens. These will be the first full-scale casinos to be built in New York City. But while these casinos might seem to offer a much-needed revenue boost to the city, the state has yet to address the costs they will impose on families and communities. Casinos rely on “problem gamers” for a large share of their revenue, and so far, state officials have failed to implement the necessary safeguards to mitigate the public health concerns that arise from the proliferation of casinos.
How Casinos Came to New York City
In 2013, New York state voters approved a constitutional amendment to authorize seven new casino licenses in the state. In 2022, the state laid out the procedures for issuing three of those licenses in New York City. Lawmakers justified the introduction of the casinos by claiming that they would provide much-needed tax revenue to the city’s chronically underfunded public transit system.
In addition to acquiring zoning approval and official licensing from the New York State Gaming Commission, each project had to win approval from a Community Advisory Committee (CAC), a board composed of the New York governor, mayor, state senate, state assembly, borough president, and city council. To pass the plan, four of the six committee members needed to approve each project.
In practice, the community approval process was driven top-down by powerful voices in the state. In all of the CACs, the governor and mayor voted for the proposal regardless of what concerns local residents held. In one notable case, then-mayor Eric Adams actually vetoed a city council decision that had effectively shut down a casino project by ruling that the developer could not convert public parking into private development.
Lobbying has also played a substantial role. For the past two years, since the state announced the process, the casino lobby has been the biggest spender in Albany. Some notable groups include hedge fund manager and leader of the Metropolitan Park casino project Steve Cohen’s lobbying group, which spent nearly $2 million in the first half of 2025 alone. This process sidelined local opposition. Critics of the Metropolitan Park project argued that the CAC process was a setup to manufacture support, claiming that the committee’s meeting start time was moved and that the meeting was cut off early. The committee, they noted, was chaired by Assembly Member Larinda Hooks. Notably, Steve Cohen donated $250,000 to Laborers Building a Better New York, a super PAC that supported Hooks in her District 35 state assembly primary against anti-casino candidate Hiram Monserrate.
Throughout the CAC process, applicant casinos had the opportunity to hold community meetings to both pitch the benefits of their projects and also to collect feedback on their proposals from community members. The casinos promised to bring jobs, community programming, and safety to the community. Nonetheless, the state imposed no requirement that developers guarantee their promises. As a result, developers made promises without signing any binding commitments.
Gambling as a Public Health Issue
All of the casino proposals addressed one key issue: the public health and social costs of gambling addiction, particularly for the “problem gamers” who are most vulnerable to these costs. Problem gamers are people who exhibit self-destructive behaviors related to gambling, such as losing control over their bets, displaying decreased tolerance of minor wins, and chasing losses with successive subsequent bets in an attempt to get even.
Estimates suggest that the percentage of gambling revenue generated from problem gamers ranges between about 40 and 60 percent. One study in Massachusetts even found that 90% of casino revenue in the state came from problem or at-risk gamblers, who represent only 10% of players in the state. The study also found that this issue is getting worse. From 2014 to 2022, the percentage of revenues made from problem gamers in Massachusetts increased from 74% to 90%, all while the overall share of problem gamers from which this revenue is drawn stayed the same. Increased targeting and engagement of problem gamers, along with greater availability of gambling, drove a larger share of revenue from them.
The gaming companies responded to these concerns with two strategies. The first was to ignore the question and affirm that their mission was only to collect revenue from rich tourists who could afford it. The second was to tout their records on problem gamers at other locations and their “robust” problem-gamer programs. Gambling operators like Caesars Palace claim to have strong problem gaming protections; they highlight self-exclusion not just from gaming, but also from promotions, as a key policy, in addition to staff training. Notably, even the companies with the most robust gambling protections have opt-in or voluntary exclusion programs that require individuals to nominate themselves for exclusion from gambling. Family members cannot opt vulnerable loved ones into the program. This removes an important mechanism that could be used to break problem gamers out of an addictive cycle.
One major reason gambling remains largely unregulated in New York is that it is relatively new. The state did not legalize commercial licenses until 2013, and since it was not until 2025 that the state approved the first New York City licenses, the state legislature has not yet had much opportunity or impetus to address the industry. The state has thus far only passed one major piece of legislation, a 2013 bill including problem-gaming awareness requirements — essentially signage around the casino floor about the dangers of gambling — and the aforementioned scant voluntary exclusion program.
Voluntary exclusion is an especially underwhelming intervention considering that casinos often rely on cultivating addictive behavior. Slot machines are programmed to generate near-misses and to allow rapid betting, encouraging more gambling. Casinos also keep gamblers hooked through reward programs. These look similar to reward programs for fast food restaurants, wherein the more money customers spend, the more points they collect, which gives them perks such as free hotel rooms, flights, and sometimes even free gaming spend. This works as a funnel for casinos, collecting their most “loyal” customers and encouraging their increased engagement.
The larger-scale version of this is the “comp” program, where casinos offer major “complimentary” perks like free flights, hotel rooms, meals, and activities for high rollers to gamble a minimum amount at their venues. These comp programs have come under scrutiny in the past, with casinos facing lawsuits for comping problem gamers. These lawsuits, however, are more prevalent for online gaming platforms for “engineering addiction.” Unfortunately, for brick-and-mortar casinos, the bar for proving harm is high and has gone unchallenged for so long that successful legal action against them remains rare.
These predatory practices to drive revenue end up creating significant public health risks. Problem gaming is a public health issue, and we need to treat it as such. While the government should not restrict people’s personal freedom to gamble outright, it must take steps to mitigate the effects of gambling on families and communities. Studies show that gambling has been found to negatively affect not just gamblers themselves, but also their families. One study on the impacts of problem gaming on families found that up to 89% experienced reduced savings and 23% lost major assets, including cars and homes. Sixty-four percent reported a significant decrease in financial security. The effects also went beyond finances. Eighty-two percent of family members reported that the problem gaming of a loved one had affected their own ability to work or study, and 99% indicated it had negatively affected their health, ranging from stress to self-harm.
When considering the case for treating gambling as a public health issue, Europe offers a successful case study. Gambling has been legal in Europe for longer, and governments there have adopted various programs to mitigate the associated public health issues. In the UK, it is illegal to use a credit card on the casino floor, preventing players from gambling with borrowed money. Staff are responsible for cutting off gamers if they exhibit problematic behaviors. Moreover, regulators can leverage casinos’ own technology to mitigate harm. In Sweden, the government limits how much gamblers can lose over a certain period before they are automatically cut off. In Italy, gamblers can be restricted from passing a certain threshold of losses in a given timeframe. Regulators could implement these policies using data already available from rewards networks.
Next Steps for New York
The New York state legislature needs to act now to address the urgent public health crisis it brought on itself. Casinos not only disproportionately harm problem gamers, but also build incentives structures that attract them. While the advertisement is targeted, the effects are widespread, affecting families of problem gamers and causing wider societal harm. Casinos should never have been approved in New York, but now that they are, the state needs to limit their most dangerous and exploitative tactics. This means protecting not only the most vulnerable New Yorkers, but also their families and communities.
On March 25, the New York State Assembly passed a package to protect problem gamers. It lowered the barrier to voluntary self-exclusion and increased visibility of gambling as an issue by creating a problem gamblers awareness month and requiring casinos to advertise gambling hotlines on their promotional materials. These reforms represent a step in the right direction, but there is still more work to be done. The state should treat gambling like the public health crisis it is and take inspiration from policies in Europe in order to provide more comprehensive solutions to the issue. Policy interventions moving forward should include banning credit card use by casino customers, as many states have done; implementing mandatory loss limits; and ending predatory rewards programs.
New York state needs a fundamental shift in its approach to gambling, recognizing that the tax revenue gains from casinos come at the cost of a public health crisis for New Yorkers. If the state’s new casinos are here to stay, then lawmakers must make every effort to mitigate their harmful repercussions.
