A casino resort priced at $4.0 billion is a big undertaking for any operator. For one whose shares are worth about $700 million in total, it is a project between five and six times the size of the company itself. That is the situation at Bally’s Corporation (NYSE: BALY), which said on that it has closed a loan package led by WhiteHawk Capital Partners, a private credit firm, to help pay for its planned resort in the Bronx.
The headline figures are easy to follow. Bally’s received $400 million on October 1st, and another $160 million is available to draw later. The money is meant for pre-construction costs, with a portion going to general corporate purposes, including the fees and expenses of the deal itself. Pre-construction here means the planning and site work that comes before building begins. Taken together, the two pieces add up to $560 million, or 14% of the project’s stated cost.
It helps to know what is being built and who is building it. The Bronx resort is expected to open by 2030 with 3 million square feet of gaming facilities, a 500-room hotel, a 2,000-person event center and an 18-hole golf course. Bally’s already runs 20 casinos across 11 U.S. states and one in Newcastle, UK, and it owns Bally Bet, a sports betting and online gaming platform. It also holds a majority interest in Bally’s Intralot S.A. (ATSE: BYLOT.AT), a lottery supplier listed in Athens, along with development rights in Las Vegas and Chicago.
The closing announcement did not spell out what the loan costs, but a regulatory filing from September did. The loans carry interest at Term SOFR, a common benchmark for dollar borrowing, plus 8.50% a year. They mature 18 months after first funding, which points to roughly April 2028, well before the resort’s planned opening. The borrower is a subsidiary, Bally’s New York Operating Company, and the debt is senior secured, backed by substantially all of the assets of the New York entities involved. The agreement also includes covenants tied to construction and development of the project. A delayed-draw loan, for readers new to the term, works much like an approved credit line that is used only when the bills arrive.
Put those terms together and the purpose becomes clear. This is bridge money. A loan that comes due before the casino takes its first bet has to be repaid or replaced with something larger and longer. Chairman Soo Kim said as much in September, when he described the financing as a way to advance pre-construction planning so that the company is ready to complete the rest of the capital raise and stay on schedule. Analysts at CBRE, as reported by the industry newsletter Earnings+More, called it the first leg of a multi-layered financing plan and expect it to be refinanced through a bigger package.
The arithmetic shows how much is left to arrange. Even with the full $560 million drawn, about $3.44 billion of the $4.0 billion budget would still need a source. The Real Deal, citing a Bloomberg report from August, noted that Bally’s had already put more than $800 million into the New York project. The company’s release does not say how the remainder will be divided among lenders, partners and its own cash.
Three questions will shape how this story develops. The first is who supplies the next and much larger round of capital, and at what price. The second is whether Bally’s taps the remaining $160 million, which would signal that early work is moving along. The third is timing, since a permanent financing package needs to be in place before the WhiteHawk loans come due in 2028. Each of those answers will change the level of risk attached to a company building something far bigger than itself.
