Wynn CEO Warns Massachusetts Over Gaming Expansion
Wynn Resorts chief executive Craig Billings has told Massachusetts lawmakers and regulators that the state cannot keep widening gambling and expect its casinos to stay healthy. His argument appeared in a Boston Globe opinion piece published on October 15, 2026.
Billings framed the 2011 casino law as a deal: a small number of tightly regulated destination resorts and one slots facility, in return for large private investment, jobs, state taxes and municipal payments. He wrote that it was never meant to be an unlimited market.
In his view the state is now eroding that model with live sports betting, online lottery games that launched this year, online casino legislation under consideration, and a House amendment that would let horse racing licensees run historic horse racing machines.
Historic Horse Racing In The Crosshairs
Billings described the machines as slots under a different regulatory label. He argued they would compete for the same customers without the licensing costs, tax obligations, community commitments and responsible gaming controls that casinos carry.
He also pointed to neighbouring New Hampshire, which legalized the machines in 2021 and added video lottery terminals in 2025, and said that supply pulls demand out of Massachusetts. The dispute over the machines is one of the open items in the state's wider economic development bill.
Massachusetts players can compare what is currently regulated in the state through our guides to Massachusetts sportsbooks and Massachusetts online casinos.
The Encore Strike
The column also addressed the labor dispute at Encore Boston Harbor, where roughly 1,300 Teamsters and Unite Here members have been on strike since September 4 after their contract expired on August 31. Billings wrote that Encore's labor costs have risen nearly 37 percent over four years while revenue grew less than 2 percent.
He said the dispute was not caused by gaming policy alone, but that wage growth against a squeezed revenue base is not sustainable, and that lawmakers who back the strikers while also backing new competitors have not connected the two issues.
He closed by arguing that the casinos are not endlessly refillable sources of funds and that the cost of expansion falls on operators, shareholders, host communities and employees rather than on the lawmakers who approve it.
Other Operators Oppose Amendment
State House News Service, via WWLP, reported that the House amendment would let racing licensees, chiefly the simulcast centers at Suffolk Downs and Raynham Park, take wagers on historical horse races. These are completed races replayed on terminals with the identifying details changed, so bettors do not know which race they are backing.
The operators of Plainridge Park Casino, MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor opposed the amendment, as did the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, which runs its own casino in Taunton. SHNS said that opposition was rekindled in the week Billings' column ran.
Billings also argued that the lottery's new eInstant games play like slot machines from a customer's point of view. In his telling, that leaves the state as both the regulator and the competitor of the casinos it taxes, while it still expects the same revenue performance and rising payments to host communities.
Under the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, Category 1 resort casinos are taxed at 25% of gross gaming revenue, and he closed his argument by calling for policy stability if the state wants the jobs, tax revenue and investment those properties bring.
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