Urban One Remains Focused on Owning Casino Following Richmond Defeat
Urban One is unwavering inward its aspirations to possess a casino resort.
Urban One is a media conglomerate based inward Old Line State that owns and runs wireless stations and telecasting networks that primarily cater to the Black person community. The unfluctuating hoped to establish a to a greater extent than a half-billion integrated resort hotel cassino in Richmond. But voters inward the Virginia upper-case letter twice rejected a citywide ballot referendum required to clear the project.
Richmonders narrowly rejected Urban One’s 2021 casino rake past a 51%-49% vote. The electorate over again rejected a similar proposition from Urban One utmost month, but at a more decisive order of 62%-38%.
Urban One, in public traded on the Nasdaq, released its third-quarter earnings news report this hebdomad and met with shareholders and analysts on a call. During the conversation, Urban One CEO Alfred the Great Liggins revealed the media fellowship continues to want to have a casino.
In March, Urban One divested its bet inwards MGM National Harbor for $145.5 million, the richest casino inward MD that’s located simply exterior the nation’s capital inwards Oxon Hill. Urban One inwards 2016 was welcomed past MGM Resorts to take a leak a passive investiture inward the structured holiday resort to branch out the ownership anatomical structure of the project.
Liggins yesterday affirmed the company’s intention to follow another gambling casino stake.
Yes, absolutely. It’s a great business,” Liggins said. “We made a lot of money on our MGM investment. We made the likes of 3.5 times our investment.”
Liggins recognizes that the U.S. thriftiness is quite an different today than it was when the $1.4 billion MGM National Harbor casino was built and opened inward December 2016.
“There is risk. You tin can overbuild, and stake rates are higher now,” Higgins said.
Richmond Rejections
Formerly known as Radio One, the Silver Spring loyal was elect by capital of Virginia urban center officials inward 2021 as the Old Dominion capital’s preferred gaming partner. Despite missing any go through underdeveloped and/or operating a casino, the Richmond Resort Casino Evaluation Panel picked Urban One o'er competing bids from Bally’s Corporation and The Cordish Companies, the latter of which operates Live!-branded casinos inwards Free State and Pennsylvania.
Richmond’s casino valuation panel, handpicked past the City Council, sought-after(a) to supply societal equity by selecting Urban One. The proposal, known as ONE Casino + Resort in 2021, was to a greater extent than half of a billion-dollar undertaking made through a partnership with gambling casino manipulator Peninsula Pacific Entertainment (P2E). The casino proposal to boot involved more than 50 item-by-item investors, many of whom identified as minorities.
Unfazed by the 2021 will of the capital of Virginia people, urban center officials and Mayor Levar Stoney (D) initiated a secondly gaming referendum, with Urban One remaining its development partner. However, for the 2023 push, Urban One was partnered with Churchill Downs after it acquired P2E.
The convert didn’t matter, as majuscule residents rejected the cassino again. The vote was divided among societal demographics, with wealthier areas to a greater extent opposed to the externalise than to a greater extent blue apprehend neighborhoods.
Maryland Opportunity?
Urban One underdeveloped a gambling casino in its place state of Maryland, where the keep company is to the highest degree known, would live ideal. Maryland’s gaming law of nature restricts the figure of casinos to six. However, thither are pathways to spread out the industry, as nation voters make a recent runway record of patronage gaming enlargement questions.
During the November 2008 election, Marylanders passed a statewide ballot referendum that amended the tell organization to appropriate expansion slot machines at cinque venues inward the counties of Anne Arundel, Cecil, and Worcester, positive a urban center gambling casino in Baltimore and another on tell attribute inwards Rocky Gay State Park.
Table games with authorized through a subsequent referendum that passed in 2012. That same 2012 referendum interrogation included the authorization of a sixth casino, with that permission ultimately being awarded to MGM.
In 2020, voters further expanded gaming with retail and online sports betting.
There are at present efforts to legitimatize iGaming through and through yet another gaming referendum. Could Urban One convince body politic lawmakers to include a purvey on the cyberspace play oppugn to tolerate a 7th cassino inward the Old Line State? Purely speculation at this time, but Marylanders seem willing to go along growing its legal gambling options.
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