Are MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Casinos for Sale?

Indeed, MGM pursued such a deal in 2019, just weeks before Encore opened its doors. MGM has deeper pockets, with far more casinos and revenue than Wynn Resorts, Encore’s parent.

The Togues continued to struggle when Wynn Resorts abruptly halted a $400 million expansion it was planning for the Everett property in May. Some wondered if it was because the casino company was hedging its bets, perhaps ready to look to Boston for a coveted New York City casino license in a $12 billion partnership with companies affiliated with Hudson Yards.

Word is strong enough that it’s made its way to Las Vegas, where Encore bosses want to set the record straight.

“Wynn Resorts has no plans to sell Encore Boston Harbor,” according to Wynn spokesman Michael Weaver.

And if Wynn wins a license in New York — which regulators won’t grant until late 2025 — the company may want to keep Boston so it can send customers from one East Coast casino to another .

To be clear, none of this is an extension of Encore the Boston doubling plan is back on track. In fact, Weaver, in a statement, noted that “the project has been canceled and may resume at a future date.”

Wall Street analysts who follow the gaming industry say it doesn’t make much sense for Wynn to leave the Boston market right now. Additionally, there are unlikely to be many buyers for a $2.6 billion casino, especially since Wynn doesn’t even own the property, having sold the land on which the Everett casino sits to a real estate investment trust in 2022.

“It certainly adds a layer of complexity and by definition I would think it narrows the pool of potential suitors,” said David Katz, managing director of gaming, lodging and leisure research at Jefferies LLC.

Compared to Wynn’s other resorts in gaming hotbeds Las Vegas and Macau, Everett can feel like an outlier. Still, Encore Boston matters, generating about $866 million in operating income in 2023, about 13 percent of Wynn’s total revenue, according to securities filings.

For MGM, which owns more than two dozen casinos in the US and China, Springfield is a different story.

“It’s just less significant,” said Chad Beynon, managing director and gaming analyst at Macquarie Capital, who estimates that MGM Springfield accounts for just 2 to 3 percent of MGM’s total profit.

MGM had high hopes for its $960 million investment in Springfield and thought the property could become a key part of what Beynon describes as a “hub-and-spoke” strategy to build a customer base from regional markets to send it to MGM-branded properties on the Vegas Strip — a model that other Vegas casino operators have long used.

“Springfield probably falls short of that goal,” Beynon said.

MGM has also sold the land on which the Springfield casino sits, but analysts believe the property at the right price could generate serious bidders, particularly Native American tribes that have the money and operational experience to expand. An often-cited example: The Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama bought a casino in Pennsylvania from the Las Vegas Sands Corp. for $1.3 billion in 2019.

An MGM spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, but industry observers did say they’d be surprised if MGM keeps Springfield. That’s because the casino conglomerate appears more focused on building its BetMGM online sports betting and gaming platform to better compete with market leaders DraftKings and FanDuel.

MGM “would like to get out of a lot of their brick-and-mortar casinos,” said Richard McGowan, a finance professor at Boston College who studies the gaming industry. “They believe the future of the gambling industry is more sports gambling than physical casinos.”

Already, sports betting — which just launched last year in Massachusetts — accounts for about a third of the state’s total taxable gambling revenue this year, according to state gambling commission figures.

Perhaps that’s the safe bet: that sports betting and online gaming could one day overtake table games and traditional slots.

And that could make owning a casino a lot less appealing than it seemed just a few years ago.

Shirley Leung is a business columnist and host of the Globe Opinion podcast “Say More with Shirley Leung.” Find the podcast on Apple, Spotifyand globe.com/saymore. Follow her on Threads @shirley02186

Shirley Leung is a business columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].