Foxwoods Resort Casino history

Also in 1993, G. Michael Brown became the chairman of Foxwood Resort Casino.

The tribe added casino table games, followed by even more additional slot machines in 1993.

When the casino opened the Fox Theater and Grand Pequot Tower hotel in 1993, Frank Sinatra sang and performed for five different sold out shows.

To consult in the management and legal issues surrounding the new casino, Heyward tapped G. Michael Brown, who would be named CEO of the company in 1993.

In 1994, gamblers dropped $4.5 billion into the casino's 2,650 slot machines.

Slot-win per day averages were comparable by fall 1996 as slot business increased 43 percent overall, with 3500 new machines between the two casinos.

Foxwoods has had its own in-state competition since 1996 from the Mohegan Sun, which lies just west, across the Thames River.

Brown's ties to Genting surfaced again three years later in 1996, when Connecticut's Casino Application Review Committee considered Brown for a permanent license.

Brown did not tell the state of Connecticut about his work for Lim in Australia and the Bahamas until 1996 when he was up for a permanent license to run Foxwoods.

Under Brown's replacement, Floyd "Bud" Celey Jr., former top casino executive for Hilton hotels, Foxwoods continued to expand, using the proceeds from the sale of $200 million in bonds sold to investors in 1996.

In 1997, the associated deluxe Grand Pequot Tower was opened for business.

Brown talked about Genting, Lim and Lim's casinos around the world in a series of interviews with The Journal beginning in 1997.

The tribe went back to Wall Street in 1997 for another $300 million.

Although the state, like the federal government, cannot tax the casino's profits, in 1998, the Pequot's slot machine payments to the state totaled $165 million.

A new advertising campaign launched in May 1999 involved a new slogan.

The facilities attracted more than 40,000 visitors on an average day in 1999, and for the third year in a row, more than one million people arrived at the resort by tour bus.

Farhrenkopf acknowledged that when the market does decide, it can have adverse consequences — in Atlantic City, for example, where casino revenue is down 37 percent since 2006 and the city’s future as a gambling mecca is very much in doubt.

Scott Butera is Foxwoods’s chief executive, its seventh since 2007.

Las Vegas, still the anchor of the gambling industry in the United States, was battered by the recession, and its revenues from gambling still lag far behind 2007 levels.

Speaking to a gathering of financial analysts in 2009, Mitchell Etess, the Mohegan Sun’s C.E.O., said, “We’ve been very cautious, especially lately, to make sure everybody realizes we’re not Foxwoods.”

Most people probably would not guess which state reaps the most revenue from its casinos. It is Pennsylvania, which in 2010 collected $1.3 billion from slots and table-game revenues.