Bally's Squeezed in Chicago and Las Vegas as a $4 Billion Bronx Build Starts the Clock

Bally's Corp is being pressed on three construction fronts at once, and the timing is unforgiving. The company is fighting a new video-gaming threat to its $1.8 billion Chicago casino, conceding it likely cannot finish its Las Vegas Strip project alongside the Athletics' 2028 ballpark, and preparing to start an eight-to-nine-month countdown to ground-breaking on a $4 billion resort in the Bronx. All three compete for capital at a company that closed the first quarter of 2026 with $559 million in cash against roughly $4.3 billion in net long-term debt plus $2.2 billion in lease liabilities.

The Chicago problem is the most immediate. Before the Illinois legislature adjourned on 1 June, Bally's secured an extension to its temporary license, buying time as construction continues on the permanent property. The relief was short-lived. A city council budget last year overruled Mayor Brandon Johnson and lifted Chicago's ban on video gaming terminals, earmarking $6.8 million in VGT licensing revenue on the assumption that about 80% of the city's 3,300 eligible liquor licensees would apply. Nearly 300 venues already have, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Bally's estimates that city-wide VGTs would cut close to $75 million from its annual casino revenue and eliminate roughly 1,000 jobs across its temporary and permanent operations.

Bally's has reason to fight hard, because the host community agreement that won it the lone Chicago license carries obligations a VGT rollout could void, including a $4 million yearly payment to the city. "Had we known that, within just a few years, this body would reverse course and allow an alternative form of gambling that breaches the agreement, we would never agree to the numerous commitments, all of which we've held up," Christopher Jewett, Bally's senior vice president of corporate development, told the council this week. The operator's counter-offer is to install slot lounges at O'Hare and Midway airports, with Jewett claiming one lounge could generate about $5 million in gaming and admission taxes and replace the budgeted VGT revenue outright. Only two US airports run slot machines today, both in Nevada: Harry Reid International in Las Vegas, where more than 1,000 machines produce nearly $40 million a year for the airport, and Reno-Tahoe, at about $1 million.

The state-level numbers explain why Chicago politicians are tempted. Illinois VGTs have already eclipsed the casino floor as a tax engine.

More than 1,100 Illinois municipalities have adopted VGTs, and until this budget cycle Chicago was the most notable holdout. The same dynamic has reshaped revenue elsewhere, from the skill-game machines Pennsylvania courts are now sorting out to the gray markets pulling players away from licensed floors. For Bally's, a single casino license negotiated in good faith is now exposed to a distributed competitor it cannot buy out.

The Las Vegas deadline Bally's already missed

In Las Vegas, the $1.2 billion mixed-use Strip development on the old Tropicana site is tied to the Athletics' neighboring stadium, a ballpark whose budget has climbed to roughly $2 billion from an earlier $1.5 billion estimate and which is slated to open in spring 2028. The stadium is on schedule. Bally's portion is not. Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief Steve Hill told The Athletic that Bally's "doesn't have the financing" to build out its share, and the authority has asked the operator to present a credible plan by August. The Athletics are now planning a contingency in case Bally's plaza is not ready, a pivot that could add about $100 million to the team's own costs.

Bally's is no longer pretending otherwise. On Thursday, CFO Mira Mircheva and attorney Dan Reaser told the Nevada Gaming Commission that the 2028 deadline binds only the stadium. "The April 2028 timeline is for the retail district, parking garage, utilities and plaza, but not the towers that come at a later date," Reaser said. In plain terms, the hotel and casino towers, the part that actually generates gaming revenue, slip to an undefined future date while the company funnels capital elsewhere.

That "elsewhere" is the Bronx. Bally's won a coveted downstate New York license last December and plans a $4 billion integrated resort on a golf course it owns, a price tag roughly equal to Chicago and Las Vegas combined. A publicly available timeline says construction begins about eight to nine months after licensure, which puts the start around this fall. Bally's told iGB it has "every motivation to get started as quickly as this fall." Stacking a $4 billion commitment on top of two unfinished builds is the crux of the strain.

Why the leverage matters for the industry

The balance sheet frames the risk. Bally's posted Q1 2026 revenue of $755.7 million, up 28.3% year over year, but a net loss of $161.9 million, or $2.69 per share, weighed down by $109.9 million in net interest expense alone. Total liabilities stood at $8.6 billion against $10.9 billion in assets. The company is leveraged near 6.3 times net debt to estimated EBITDAR, and its public equity has shrunk to a market capitalization around $738 million, a fraction of the $4.6 billion ($18.25 per share) that Standard General paid to take it private in a deal completed in early 2025. Managing partner Soohyung Kim became executive chair in January 2026 and has run a debt-fueled consolidation strategy, adding the Queen Casino merger, Evoke, a majority stake in Australia's Star Entertainment, and a reverse-style merger that handed Bally's a 58% interest in Intralot through a transaction valued at an enterprise value of 2.7 billion euros ($2.9 billion). Few operators have moved money around as aggressively.

For affiliates and B2B suppliers, the practical question is sequencing risk. A company funding three nine-and-ten-figure builds while servicing $4.4 billion of long-term debt has limited room for delay, cost overruns, or a revenue hit like the $75 million Chicago VGTs threaten. The precedent worth watching is Fontainebleau Las Vegas, which filed for bankruptcy in June 2009 at 70% completion, left subcontractors owed more than $250 million, and did not actually open until December 2023 at a final cost of $3.7 billion, a 14-year gap between shell and operation. Atlantic City's Revel, built for about $2.4 billion, filed twice and closed within two years of opening. Neither failed because demand evaporated. They failed because capital ran out mid-build. Bally's is not there, and its operating casinos still generate cash, with Casinos and Resorts segment EBITDAR of $96.2 million in Q1. But the Las Vegas tower deferral is the kind of tell that lenders read closely, and a contested takeover fight like the one circling Caesars shows how fast a leveraged gaming balance sheet can become someone else's bargaining chip.

The next hard date is August, when Bally's owes the LVCVA a Las Vegas plan and the Bronx clock is set to start. The Chicago council, having adjourned its VGT committee meeting this week without resolution, will return to a fight over whether airport slot lounges can stand in for video gaming taxes. Bally's says one O'Hare lounge alone could cover the $6.8 million the city budgeted.