Soo Kim

Soo Kim has a lot on his plate.

When his small Rhode Island casino company bought Bally’s Atlantic City for $25 million in 2020, he renamed his company after that property. Bally’s then bought several regional casinos, rebranding and upgrading them.

The company surprisingly won the one casino license available in Chicago, and later, in another unexpected victory, was granted one of the three casino licenses in New York City. Bally’s also bought the Tropicana in Las Vegas, and offered 9 acres to the baseball team, the former Oakland Athletics, to build a 35,000-seat stadium that will open in 2028, with a Bally’s mixed use development surrounding it.

He’s also teamed with the lottery company Intralot for the company’s iGaming business. He spoke with GGB Editor at Large Roger Gros following his presentation at the East Coast Gaming Congress at the Hard Rock Atlantic City in April. Listen and view the full version of this GGB Podcast here.

GGB: Let’s start with Chicago. That is scheduled to open next year?

Kim: Yes. Early next year. We’re excited, less than 12 months at this point. This is going to be transformative for us, obviously. Bally’s has continued to build on strength, so obviously in New York, Australia, we continue to do more. But Chicago is still the next very important step for us—a critical step. What a fantastic market.

In the meantime, however, they’re talking about putting slot parlors in Chicago, which you didn’t envision when you signed the development agreement.

Our host community agreement explicitly prohibits it. So we’d have to figure out what would happen in that situation. Look, I think there are lots of solutions to that problem. And we’re here to work on our public-private partnership. Obviously we’ve put reasonable capital into the city and we intend to put more, and we’re going make a big dent in the city with jobs and a real estate tax base, as well as direct gaming revenue—much more than the route operators would ever do. So I think there are solutions here.

Let’s move quickly to New York, the Bronx specifically. What do you have planned there? It’s the closest casino to Chinatown, right?

Yes, by subway, it is. But right now it’s beyond just one neighborhood in New York. You’re talking about 16 million people within a 30-mile radius, or 60-minute drive time. There’s just nothing like it. Because while there’s been gaming all over the Northeast, there’s just a little pocket around New York City where there’s no gaming. Players now don’t have to travel to Atlantic City, eastern Connecticut, Pennsylvania or upstate New York. With three operators and the racino, it would be something like 30,000 positions operating at a reasonable tax rate for a population that large.

That’s the reason why every gaming company showed up to the race. And we were honored to be selected as one of the final three. We intend to do a great job, and I think it’s going to make a huge difference in the Bronx. I grew up in New York, so it has a little bit more poignancy for me, but it’s also important for Bally’s. There’s nothing more important than Chicago for Bally. But then, nothing also might be New York.

How do you plan to compete with the other two licensees, Resorts World New York City and Hard Rock New York?

We’re going to build something right for that market. We bid the right project. While the other projects are bigger and more complex, they’re also harder to pull off. We can build upon what we’ve learned and what we’re building in Chicago to build something a little larger in New York. We’re going to move quickly and accurately.

And I don’t think of it as competition. We have three operators working together in a great city, in a great market. We’re not that worried about competition.

Let’s move to Las Vegas. The stadium project for the Athletics is humming along. Lots of people had doubts about that.

I found it so amusing. The owner of the A’s is a close friend of mine. People said he couldn’t pull it off. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, it’d be an easy bet to lay. Baseball will be played in April 2028. I don’t think we’ll finish our resort by then, but we’ll be ready with what we do in terms of connecting the site and building some level of development that will start to capture the energy of the stadium. We’ll have some exciting announcements on that very soon.

You’re very well positioned in your regional markets. How many casinos do you have and how are they performing?

We have 19 casinos in total now, not including the one in the U.K., in Newcastle, so that’s 20. We effectively control the Star in Australia, which is a separate public company. We’re the largest shareholder and I’m the chairman. Star currently owns two and operates one casino. We understand that even though our heritage is mid-market, regional gaming, our future is the integrated resort in some of the largest cities: New York, Chicago, Sydney and Las Vegas.

We’ve transformed the perception of our company. I keep reminding people, there was a time when Bally’s Park Place was the center of the gaming universe at Boardwalk and Park Place—the center of Atlantic City. We’re very proud to restore a great American brand – which started in Chicago, by the way – to its rightful place.