Update: Urban One’s Richmond Casino Effort

 Story by Inside Radio

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After Richmond voters last November rejected Urban One’s proposal to build a casino in South Richmond, City Council voted 8-1 in January to put the project to a second vote by residents this November. But the second chance is facing turbulence in Virginia from a state senator who wants to move the casino license opportunity to the city of Petersburg, which he represents.

“We've been down in Richmond following that and advocating for the opportunity for Richmond to have a second chance to vote on this,” Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins said Thursday. “The City Council is also committed to offering up legislation that would reduce property taxes, and specifically target casino revenues to schools and other capital projects.”

A pair of bills that would have moved the referendum from Richmond 30 miles south to Petersburg died in the Virginia House and Senate. But the battle isn’t over. Liggins told investors on the company’s quarterly earnings call that language has been added to a state budget bill that would prohibit Richmond from having a second referendum this year, moving it instead to November 2023, while studying the viability of Petersburg as a potential casino location. “There's still a lot of moving parts in the General Assembly,” Liggins explained. “There's a lot of politics involved with this casino issue that has nothing to do with the viability of the casino being in Richmond and has everything to do about certain legislators wanting it other places and willing to trade off things, in terms of votes for certain issues in order to get it.”

Liggins described the situation as “very fluid.”

Meanwhile, Peninsula Entertainment, Urban One’s partner in the $563 million casino venture, announced it is being acquired by Churchill Downs, Inc., owner of the famous racetrack in Louisville that is home to the Kentucky Derby. Churchill Downs is also a large gaming and casino operator and Liggins said they met with company execs Wednesday, who expressed excitement about the Richmond opportunity and “want to be very helpful in trying to make sure that that that opportunity is not lost.”

During the question-and-answer portion of Urban One’s earnings call, investors pressed Liggins about the project’s fate. “I'm not here to tell you that it's dead. I'm not here to tell you that it's going to happen,” Liggins said, adding that the project’s chances of happening in Richmond are “fifty-fifty.”

Liggins said he has been travelling to Richmond regularly and that Urban One is “working lockstep” with the city “and they want to see this happen” and that he expects to have an answer within 30 days on whether the casino referendum will be put before Richmond voters for a second time this November.

Explaining that he “can’t handicap politics,” Liggins told investors they should focus on the fundamentals of Urban One’s core business and think about the casino as an “upside.”

More Station Swaps Ahead?

Liggins has spoken publicly in the past about his desire to bring more scale to Urban One’s radio clusters through swaps or purchases and on Thursday he offered an update on those efforts. “We're currently analyzing a number of opportunities. We do not have a definitive agreed upon deal to do anything at this point in time, but I continue to believe that scale in the radio business makes sense,” he said. Liggins added that they are looking at acquisitions through the lens of an industry that could be declining by the low single digits in the years ahead and that is factoring into what he’s willing to pay for stations. He also indicated that the company is ready, willing, and able to move outside its core urban radio proficiency, a step that began with its 2020 expansion in Charlotte, NC. “If we do participate in further full-scale radio consolidation, it will necessitate us going outside our traditional box of urban radio, but that's not bad,” Liggins said. “We did that in our swap with Entercom [now Audacy] in Charlotte, NorthCarolina and that turned out to be great for us. We now have a real cluster there.”