Bally’s Chicago casino enters 2nd year on the rise, but behind projections in loaded Illinois market
The proprietors of Chicago’s first casino saw their luck change for the better as they closed out the first year of legal gambling within city limits.
Bally’s finally put to bed questions about financing their permanent $1.34 billion entertainment complex, remapped their site plan at Chicago Avenue and Halsted Street after old water pipes forced them back to the drawing board, and saw steadily increasing returns from their temporary operation in River North.
But the money still isn’t flowing like city budget officials initially hoped, and in a new report released this month, state revenue forecasters say they have questions about how many more dollars can be squeezed from a crowded and ever-growing Illinois gambling market.
“Some believe that a Chicago casino, with a permanent facility, will eventually be the top revenue producing casino in this region,” analysts from the state Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability wrote. “However, it must be stressed that this would have to occur at a time that gaming options in the Chicago metropolitan area would be higher than they have ever been before.”
That massive gambling emporium, scheduled for completion by September 2026, is supposed to eventually generate around $1 billion in annual revenue — with a $200 million cut for the city’s police and firefighter pension funds — under lofty projections set by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
Over its first 12 months at the temporary Medinah Temple site, Bally’s turned out a modest $124.6 million in revenue after paying out winners, according to Illinois Gaming Board records. That generated $14.4 million for the city.
While it has quickly emerged as one of the city’s biggest attractions, with almost 1.4 million trips through the turnstiles by the end of last month, the dollar figures fall far short of estimates by Lightfoot’s budget team. They had counted on nearly $13 million by the end of last year alone.
Mayor Brandon Johnson has bet just as heavily on the temporary casino since taking office, anticipating $35 million in casino tax revenue in his first budget. Bally’s would have to more than triple its average monthly winnings to hit that mark by year’s end.
Mayor Brandon Johnson shakes hands with Soo Kim, chairman of the board of directors at Bally’s Corporation, during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Bally’s Casino Chicago at Medinah Temple in River North Tuesday morning, Oct. 3, 2023.
The company, which secured $940 million in financing over the summer to cover construction of the permanent casino, previously made a $40 million up-front payment to the city after Lightfoot handed the coveted casino license to the Rhode Island corporation.
State revenue forecasters remain bullish on prospects for Bally’s permanent site “near the untapped areas of downtown Chicago,” analysts wrote in their yearly report on the Illinois gambling industry, which generated a record $2 billion in annual tax revenue.
They expect Bally’s to eclipse Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, now the state’s top-grossing casino. It netted more than $560 million over the past year.
That figure is similar to the highest of regional casinos in Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania, where casinos “have significantly less competition for the gaming dollar than a Chicago Casino will have, which makes Chicago generating revenues that exceed the amounts in this list much more challenging,” analysts wrote.
Five of Illinois’ 16 casinos are in the Chicago metro area, with another expected to open next month in the south suburbs and a larger permanent casino slated for Waukegan. That’s all on top of about 19,000 video gaming terminals at bars and restaurants in the area, plus mobile sports betting wherever gamblers can get a signal on their phones.
The abundance of options for gamblers in a single market suggests “cannibalization at existing Illinois casinos is inevitable,” analysts concluded, “especially those in the Chicago metropolitan area where the majority of the gaming expansion will take place.”
Bally’s chairman Soo Kim believes they’ll be the ones “eating a lot of people’s lunches” when the permanent site launches, he told the Sun-Times Editorial Board in August.
Kim said Bally’s is “still ramping” the Medinah operation, and projections of $200 million per year for the city from the permanent casino remain feasible. “We haven’t seen anything in this market that says we’re not as excited as we can be.”
Bally’s president George Papanier said the company is “proud of how far we have come in just one year.”
“We have ingrained ourselves in the Chicago community and made our mark, achieved milestones that include graduating more than 200 students from our Dealer Training School, created more than 600 high-paying union jobs, hosted job fairs and vendor fairs, engaging hundreds of local businesses as future partners and began demolition to make way for our permanent location,” Papanier said in a statement. “We are thankful for everyone who has made this year possible, especially our local team, and look forward to continued growth over the coming year.”
Johnson’s office, scrambling to close an estimated $982 million budget gap next year, hasn’t released its casino revenue projection for 2025.
A former veterinarian at Hawthorne filed the federal lawsuit, alleging she was fired for speaking up about sick horses.
Nobody visits a casino for its architecture. But given the River West complex’s size, its proximity to downtown’s fine architecture, and primo, chef’s-kiss-of-a-site along the Chicago River, the city deserves a better design.
Bally’s chairman Soo Kim said his hedge fund’s $4.6 billion merger deal to buy out shareholders is “an indicator of how optimistic we are” about the revenue potential for the massive casino being built at 777 W. Chicago Ave.
The three-year financial forecast that serves as the city’s preliminary budget is due out this week. The results won’t be pretty. Even the rosiest estimates from last year projected a $636 million shortfall — and a lot has happened since.
