Casinos eyeing Miami

When most people think about the city of Miami, they envision palm trees, beautiful beaches, warm weather and vibrant nightclubs. However, few people really think of Miami as any kind of gaming paradise. After all, the city’s laws place severe restrictions on casino gaming, and most of the Miami betting scene revolves around horse tracks, electronic games and cruise ships. However, we could see a major change in this department because several casino companies are interested in the “Magic City.” Here is a look at what we could be seeing in Miami’s gaming future.

The Genting Group appears to be really serious about building a casino in downtown Miami since they’ve purchased over $230 million worth of land in the city (old Miami Herald property). Genting, which is headquartered in Malaysia, has already had plenty of success with casinos in the United States. In fact, they run a cruise ship casino that’s based out of Miami, so they have a pretty strong relationship with the city.

Their plan for the town is to build a massive 10-million-square-foot structure called Resorts World Miami. Getting into the specifics, Resorts World Miami will include 5,200 hotel rooms, 1,000 condos, a 3.5-acre lagoon area, a convention center, a ballroom, over 60 shops, bars, nightclubs and numerous restaurants. As you may have guessed, the Resorts World Miami plan won’t come cheap, and its price tag is $3 billion – plus the 30 acres of land that Genting has already purchased. However, they are pretty confident that the casino can become a huge success.

Genting is just one major casino entity that wants to stake a claim in Miami since the Las Vegas Sands group also wants to build in this potential gaming paradise. Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson has stated that he’d be willing to invest a Genting-matching $3 billion into the proposed Miami Sands casino.

Adelson has also been very active in lobbying politicians and local government officials to help the Sands group get permission to build a casino in Miami. As for Adelson’s Miami Sands master plan, details are scarce on the project, and little is known on the exact amount of hotel rooms, restaurants, shops, etc. However, it’s said that the Miami Sands project looks to be just as ambitions as Resorts World Miami.

Las Vegas Sands and the Genting Group aren’t the only groups that are actively pursing a Miami casino. Caesars Entertainment is also very interested in a Miami expansion since they’re in talks with Gulfstream Park. It’s unclear exactly what this deal would entail, but one can only imagine that it involves the two parties working together to expand what Gulfstream Park already has in place.

Currently, Gulfstream has hundreds of slots games along with some poker tables in a building next to their racetrack. Assuming their potential partnership with Caesars Entertainment turns into anything, the facility could feature gaming tables for blackjack, craps, roulette and baccarat. However, there is one big roadblock standing in the way of this and the other proposed Miami casino plans.

Miami certainly represents a lucrative casino gaming market for the companies that are looking to build here. But there is just one problem with all of these elaborate schemes and designs: nobody has a true casino license.

As mentioned before, Miami gambling is limited to racetracks, electronic gaming and some cruise ship lines. As for actual casinos, the state of Florida is in an exclusive deal with the Seminole Indian Tribe, and only they can run casino table games right now. So for Genting, Caesars or Sands to operate a casino in Miami, the Seminole Indian agreement would have to be modified or broken to allow for the aforementioned plans.

Seeing as how there would be a lot of legal problems for Florida if they flat-out broke the agreement, you can probably bet that they’ll have to modify their original agreement instead. But since companies like Genting are already purchasing expensive downtown Miami real estate to complete their vision, maybe we will see some of these casino plans go into effect soon.