John E. Taylor Jr.

Based on his public statements, John E. Taylor Jr., chairman of Twin River Worldwide Holdings Inc., is a man of great confidence. He is going to need it.

Taylor’s job makes him chief of the owner of Twin River Casino, one of several actors muscling for a share of the ever-more-splintered Northeast casino market. The story of the regional casino skirmish is like grand opera, except that, unlike the form of opera presented onstage with a seated audience, the final curtain seems to never come down.

Twin River’s plan is to move the license it acquired last year from Newport Grand to a new casino – with a hotel, dining, etc. – in Tiverton, pending approval by a statewide referendum in November. The potential payoff for the state – still years away – could be millions of dollars more a year from a revenue source – casino gambling – that is already the third-largest chunk for the state.

The proposed Tiverton casino – which Taylor says could open as soon as 2018 – would jump into a casino-rich landscape. Besides Twin River’s casino in Lincoln, Penn National Gaming last year opened Plainridge Park Casino. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe declares it has final plans to open its casino in Taunton by mid-2017, and broke ground in April.

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The Massachusetts Gaming Commission in April voted against a casino license in Brockton.

Vetting the Tiverton proposal, Rhode Island legislators have asked the obvious question: given the saturation of the market, can it achieve its fiscal commitments? Taylor says yes. But outside Twin River’s offices, you might get long odds on that assumption. •

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