Niagara Falls is widely believed to be Ontario’s premier tourist destination, welcoming some 11 million visitors annually. But Ontario Premier Doug Ford believes the city is leaving too much on the table, particularly in the casino sphere.
This week, at an unrelated news conference, Ford said that if Niagara Falls intends to truly maximize its gambling potential, it must first reshape the current framework around casino operations.
Ford added that he and Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati have already initiated conversations with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment centred around providing “more opportunities” to improve Niagara’s overall outlook as a tourist hotspot.
“There’s a tremendous opportunity with the 11 million tourists coming down to Niagara [each year],” Ford said. “I’ve been working with the region, along with Mayor Diodati, and just coming up with a different way.
“It’s not about gambling, it’s about the destination. It’s about bringing families there. It’s an incredible tourist attraction but we have to clean it up and make it more modern.”
Ford government wants Niagara to stray away from monopoly
On the Ontario side of Niagara Falls, there are two retail casinos — Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino Niagara.
Both facilities are owned by the OLG and operated by US-based Mohegan Gaming.
In said roles, the former receives revenue shares from each establishment, while the latter is responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations. Under the current agreement — inked in 2018 — Mohegan will continue to do so until 2040.
But that might no longer be the case, as the Ford government is looking to change course.
The Trillium reported on Sept. 26 that Ford’s constituents view a revamped OLG-Mohegan deal as a possible incentive for more casinos to lay ground in the Niagara region.
“We just want to modernize it and clean it up and get more opportunities, more economic development, (and) increase tourism,” Ford said Wednesday.
“There’s a whole market south of the border that we’d love to have them come up and spend a weekend (or) spend a week.”
Niagara Falls… the new Las Vegas?
The tone following Ford’s comments is that the Premier wants to accentuate Niagara Falls’ Las Vegas-style qualities and turn the southeastern Ontario city into Sin City 2.0.
However, both Ford and Diodati don’t foresee gambling playing a central role.
The elected leaders are adamant that their interest in restructuring the city’s casino landscape is purely tourism focused.
The mayor’s recent comments to the Niagara Falls Review suggest casinos are central to that plan. But, it’s not because of their signature function as gambling halls.
“Gaming is no longer the biggest reason people visit Vegas,” Diodati said on Oct.1. “People go for entertainment and dining and all the other attractions — and the key is that you use gaming to leverage tourism, so you use gaming to leverage investment and economic development.
“Finally, after all these years of multiple resolutions, multiple discussions, we’ve finally got a government that’s willing to listen to what we’re asking for and to investigate it. The most important thing, above all, is competition.”
Like Diodati, Ford is optimistic that the parties will eventually strike a new deal.
“I think it’ll turn out really well, but it’s not going to happen overnight,” he said.