MGM Resorts International has confirmed that all deal discussions with its largest shareholder, People Inc, are over, as the casino operator reported a narrower third-quarter loss on weaker results in Las Vegas and its US regional estate.

Group revenue fell 1% year on year to $4.2bn in the three months to 30 September, while adjusted EBITDA dropped 20% to $403m. The net loss attributable to MGM narrowed to $17m, or $0.07 per share, from $285m, or $1.05 per share, a year earlier. The shares fell 2.5% to $27.27 on Wednesday and are down about a quarter this year.

People Inc talks closed

People Inc, Barry Diller’s company, owns about 26% of MGM. In June it offered $48.30 a share for the roughly 74% it did not already own, then rescinded the offer on 23 September. Reports later suggested that MGM might instead try to buy People.

Chief executive Bill Hornbuckle shut that idea down on the earnings call. “We’re done, and that’s our position and that’s People’s position,” he said, according to iGaming Business.

Under an amended voting agreement, People will not take its stake above 29.9% and will vote its shares in line with the board’s recommendation on any change-of-control deal. MGM in turn agreed not to adopt defensive measures aimed at People or Diller. MGM ended the quarter with $2.3bn in cash, $5.6bn of long-term debt and more than $1bn remaining on its buyback authorisation, although it did not repurchase any shares in the quarter.

Las Vegas and regionals slip

Las Vegas Strip revenue fell 2% to about $2bn and segment adjusted EBITDAR dropped 12% to $531m. Average daily room rate and revenue per available room were both down 8%, extending a run of RevPAR declines to eight consecutive quarters. Table games win was a bright spot, rising 17% to $363m. Hornbuckle said Las Vegas had been hit harder than most travel markets, pointing to weaker visitation from Canada and other international markets.

The regional business fared worse. Revenue fell 8% to $883m and segment adjusted EBITDAR dropped 18% to $243m, with casino revenue down 10% and slot win down 11%. Chief operating officer Ayesha Molino described the casino underperformance as material. MGM is pressing ahead with a $1.4bn, 6,000-seat Sphere venue next to its National Harbor property in Maryland, due in 2030, with Prince George’s County approving up to $215m in public financing.

Macau records and Osaka on track

MGM China delivered record quarterly revenue of $1.1bn, up 5%, and a record 17% share of the Macau market. Segment adjusted EBITDAR fell 7% to $264m, which MGM China chief executive Kenneth Feng put down to the events calendar and the mix of high-end play.

The MGM Osaka integrated resort, Japan’s first, is about 11% complete and remains on schedule and on budget for a 2030 opening. Hornbuckle called it the “greatest integrated resort opportunity anywhere on the globe”.

The digital side of the business is reported through BetMGM, the joint venture with Entain, which more than doubled its adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter on a 7% rise in revenue.

Outlook

With the People Inc saga closed, attention turns to whether MGM can stabilise the Strip, where pricing has now softened for two years, and stem the decline in its regional casinos while it funds large long-term projects in Osaka and Maryland. Rival Caesars Entertainment reported this week that regional and digital growth had again offset a slump in Las Vegas.

Italy’s gambling sector will contribute €700m to the country’s 2027 budget, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni confirmed after the Council of Ministers approved the draft budget law on Wednesday.

“Settecento milioni arrivano dal settore dei giochi” (seven hundred million comes from the gaming sector), Meloni told the post-cabinet press conference, listing gambling alongside energy companies, banks and insurers as the main sources of funding for a package worth around €26bn. Banks and insurers, together with a higher financial transactions tax, are expected to provide more than €5bn, while energy companies have been asked for a contribution of a similar size to gambling.

Meloni presented the levies as a matter of burden-sharing rather than a targeted attack, arguing that sectors with fewer difficulties should help in a difficult moment. The bill now goes to Parliament, which must approve it by 31 December.

How the money could be raised

The government has not yet published a line-by-line breakdown, and the gambling measures are not final until Parliament has voted. Reporting by Italian trade outlets Agimeg and Agipronews points to a mix of measures that falls mostly on land-based gaming.

The largest lever under discussion is an increase of up to one percentage point in the PREU, the levy charged on stakes in slot machines and video lottery terminals. Agimeg reported that a smaller rise had met resistance within the governing majority. A second strand would extend retail betting, slot, VLT and bingo concessions that are due to expire, for two to three years, at a considerably higher price than previous rollovers. Current concessions for slots, retail betting and bingo run out on 31 December 2026, and the existing extension brings in around €232.8m a year, according to Jamma.

Other options reported include folding the Gratta e Vinci scratchcard concession, which expires in September 2028, into a three-year extension, and recovering residual debts from the slot supply chain linked to an extraordinary levy introduced in 2015. Il Sole 24 Ore reported that the full gaming package could raise as much as €900m and include a fifth weekly Lotto draw, while Agi, citing majority sources, put the figure at €800m.

Online gambling appears to have been largely spared. Agimeg said only modest adjustments were being considered for the online channel, which must remain consistent with the principle of fiscal neutrality. Italy’s new online licensing regime has only been live since November 2025, with each licence costing €7m, an annual concession fee of 3% of net margin and a continuing ban on gambling advertising under the Dignity Decree.

Land-based operators under pressure

The draft budgetary plan sent to Brussels earlier this month reportedly put gambling’s contribution at €718m a year for 2027 and 2028 and €478m for 2029, around €1.9bn over three years.

Retail operators have warned that further increases could push the land-based network past breaking point. Dario Peirone, director general of the Istituto Milton Friedman, said ahead of the cabinet meeting that further tax tightening “would spell the final collapse of land-based gambling”, according to iGaming Business.

What comes next

The budget law will be debated in both chambers through November and December, and the detailed gambling provisions are likely to be fought over line by line as trade associations lobby on the PREU rate and the cost of concession extensions. With retail licences expiring at the end of this year, operators need the extension terms settled before the bill is passed.

Gaming machines in British betting shops, casinos and bingo halls will pay Machine Games Duty (MGD) at 25% from 1 April 2027, after Chancellor John Healey used Wednesday’s Budget to redraw the thresholds that decide which machines fall into the higher rate.

Under the change, set out in the Treasury’s overview of tax legislation and rates, any machine with a maximum charge to play of more than £1 or a maximum prize of more than £100 will move from the standard 20% rate to the higher 25% rate. Until now the higher rate has applied only to machines costing more than £5 a play. The practical effect is to pull Category B machines, the mainstay of high street bookmakers and land-based casinos, into the top band. Lower-stake machines in pubs and seaside arcades stay on the standard rate. The measure will be legislated in Finance Bill 2026-27.

A second measure changes who pays. From 1 April 2028, suppliers will become liable for MGD on machines they own and run under profit-share deals with venues. Premises licence holders, permit holders and pub tenants will remain liable where they own a machine outright or rent it on fixed terms and control the takings. HMRC is consulting on how that switch will work until 20 January 2027, although the consultation does not seek views on rates or on stake and prize limits.

Relief that it was not 40%

The outcome is milder than many in the sector had feared. A Social Market Foundation report earlier this year had floated a 40% MGD rate, and the idea gained traction after 90 Labour MPs urged the Chancellor to double the duty on Category B machines. It also follows last year’s Budget, which almost doubled remote gaming duty from 21% to 40% from April 2026 and set the remote general betting duty on course to rise from 15% to 25% next year. Adult gaming centres also lose business rates relief under this year’s package.

Investors read the result as a relief. Rank Group shares rose about 8.8%, Entain gained about 4.7% and evoke added about 3.8% on Wednesday, according to market data cited by the trade press. Entain said it expects roughly £25m a year in additional UK and Ireland retail costs before mitigation and aims to cover the full amount by the end of 2028 through estate rationalisation, group-wide savings and potential market share gains. Its 2026 guidance and its 2028 adjusted cash flow target of £500m are unchanged.

“We’ve been clear about what’s at stake: jobs, investment and the future of betting shops on Britain’s high streets,” Entain chief executive Stella David said in a post on X.

Industry warns on shops and the black market

The Betting and Gaming Council called the rise a “deeply damaging decision”, pointing to modelling that suggests close to 9,000 jobs could be lost and around 1,000 betting shops and casinos could close or come under serious threat. Consultancy Regulus Partners estimated that the higher rate could close half of Britain’s betting shops over four years and cost horseracing £57m in levy and media rights income.

Retail estates are already shrinking. evoke closed around 270 shops in the period covered by its third-quarter trading update, and Flutter last week set out plans to cut up to 1,400 UK and Ireland jobs, citing the earlier tax rises.

Speaking to iGaming Business, Ismail Vali, president of Gaming Compliance International, said unlicensed operators were taking a growing share of online gross gaming revenue and warned that the UK was “knocking on the door of 10% illegal black market share”. He said he expected retail to consolidate, some operators to fail and more play to migrate online.

Dan Waugh, a partner at Regulus, told the same outlet the industry needed to work out “how it breaks this cycle of tax increases and regulatory tightening”.

What happens next

The rate change will be carried in Finance Bill 2026-27 and takes effect in April 2027, giving operators around five months to adjust their estates. The supplier liability change follows a year later, once the HMRC consultation has closed. With two consecutive Budgets now raising gambling duties, operators will be watching whether the Treasury treats this round as the end of the tightening cycle or the start of another.