Boston is Wynn’s piggy bank.
Encore Boston Harbor earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Very little of it stays here. Wynn’s chief executive has explained the arrangement to investors in plain terms:
“It’s great. It chugs along. It produces cash. Again, we can redeploy that cash, and it’s a stable place.”
“Redeploy that cash” means spend it somewhere else. Wynn’s own filings show where it went, and how little came back to Everett. Every number on this page comes with its source linked.5
“This fight is about more than a paycheck. It’s about our families, our future, and the future of Everett.”
“This is my hometown. We need to ensure that Encore’s earnings go into the workers’ pockets and back to the local economy around Everett.”
“I’ve worked at Encore Boston since before the casino opened. We’re ready to strike to win the same pay as the hotel workers in Boston!”
“It’s going to take all of us, showing up, and making our voices heard. We have the power to make a difference when we act as one. Together we can win this!”
“We generate revenue for Encore; for this reason, we want fair pay and for Encore to keep the money in Everett—we don’t need other casinos in other countries.”
“After we won the Union in Slots, having a voice was the biggest change. We’ve been successful in bringing people back to work that have been unfairly fired and it’s a really great feeling to be able to help people like that.”
For every dollar Wynn put back into Encore, the casino handed the company $5.70.
Wynn reports what each of its properties earns and what it spends on each one. Set those two numbers side by side for Encore Boston Harbor and the pattern is not subtle.
In 2025 alone it was 11 cents.
Encore Boston Harbor is one of the most profitable casinos in the Northeast. In 2025 it took in $846.9 million, paid every operating cost, from wages and benefits to food and marketing, paid $184.2 million in gaming taxes to Massachusetts, and still cleared $236.7 million in operating profit.3 Wynn put $26.9 million back into the building that year.4
Everett produces a fifth of Wynn’s American profit. It received 6% of the company’s investment.
Wynn discloses capital spending property by property. Here is where the money went from 2021 through 2025.4
Wynn spent nearly five times as much building a casino in Ras Al Khaimah in two years as it spent on Encore Boston Harbor in five.
Between 2023 and 2025 the company bought back roughly $1 billion of its own stock and paid down over $1 billion in debt, while continuing its quarterly dividend.8
Wynn’s money isn’t gone.
It’s just going somewhere else.
Then Wynn sold the building itself. For $1.7 billion.
In 2022, Wynn sold the land and buildings of Encore Boston Harbor to Realty Income, a real estate trust based in San Diego, for $1.70 billion in cash.9 That single transaction pulled nine times more money out of the property than Wynn invested in it over five years.
Wynn kept running the casino. It now pays rent to use it: a 30-year lease that started at $100 million a year and rises annually. In 2026 those payments come to $128.8 million, money that leaves Massachusetts every year and goes to a landlord in California.10
None of this is a secret. Wynn’s executives describe it openly. Just not to us.
When Wynn talks to Wall Street, it does not describe a company short of money. Take a single day: August 4, 2026, four weeks before the Encore contract expires. That day, Wynn told investors that Encore Boston Harbor had just set second-quarter records for hotel revenue and revenue per available room7, that it would absorb a roughly $600 million budget increase at its UAE resort rather than slow construction7, and this:
When the city asked Wynn to pay more, the company said it had better places to put its money.
Wynn had promised a $400 million expansion across Broadway: a theater, a nightclub, a poker room, parking. In May 2024, after a dispute with Everett over taxes and impact fees, Wynn suspended it. A company spokeswoman explained why the city’s terms didn’t work:
As Old Everett becomes New Everett, is Encore part of the solution or part of the problem?
For a century, Everett’s skyline was smokestacks and tank farms: Monsanto, the Mystic power station, the oil terminals along the river. Those industries gave the city generations of good union jobs. Today the skyline is a bronze casino tower, and the old jobs are becoming hospitality jobs. Roughly 1,900 more are planned for Lower Broadway alone.15
Encore is the largest private employer in Everett and the largest hospitality employer at a single address in the region. Whatever standard Encore sets becomes the standard for New Everett. When Wynn wanted its casino license, it made Everett a set of promises about what those jobs would be.14 Here is how they have held up.15
New Everett’s jobs will either be careers that keep families in Everett or low-wage jobs that push them out. Keeping the promises it made to get its license is how Encore becomes part of the solution.
Wynn is not broke. Wynn is choosing.
At the end of 2025 the company held $4.6 billion in cash, short-term investments, and available credit.2 It owns a casino in Everett that clears more than $200 million a year.
Now Wynn tells the people who work at Encore Boston Harbor that the money isn’t there.1
Encore Boston Harbor advertises a five-star experience. The housekeepers, cooks, servers, bartenders, and cleaners who deliver it are asking Wynn to put a fair offer on the table before their contract expires on August 31.
This region doesn’t leave workers standing alone.
New England built the American labor movement. The mill workers who marched for bread and roses did it in Lawrence, a few miles up the road from Everett. In 2024, when Boston’s hotel workers went on strike, the region stood behind them. Neighbors, guests, and elected leaders honored their picket lines, and the workers won.
Now it may be Encore’s turn. The workers at Encore Boston Harbor are New England. They live in Everett, Chelsea, Malden, Revere, Lynn, and Boston, and the money they earn stays here. They don’t want a strike. They want a fair contract before this one expires on August 31. Whether there’s a picket line on Labor Day weekend is Wynn’s choice.
Don’t cross the picket line.
Don’t book the rooms. Don’t play the tables. Don’t make the dinner reservation. While we’re out, stay out. And tell Wynn why you stayed away.
Check every number yourself
Publicly traded companies must report their finances to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and executives’ statements to investors are public record. Everything on this page comes from those documents or from published news reporting.
- Wynn Resorts, ebhtogetherandforward.com, company campaign website, copyright Wynn Resorts Holdings, LLC (2026).
- Wynn Resorts, Limited, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, “Capital Resources”: $1.463 billion cash and equivalents, $601.8 million short-term investments, and $2.589 billion available revolver borrowing capacity as of December 31, 2025.
- Same filing and prior-year 10-K filings, Note 20 “Segment Information.” Encore Boston Harbor Adjusted Property EBITDAR: $257.4 million (2023), $247.1 million (2024), $236.7 million (2025); $741.2 million combined. For 2025: total operating revenues $846.9 million, cost of revenue $426.0 million, gaming taxes $184.2 million.
- Wynn Resorts Form 10-K filings, 2021–2025, capital expenditures by segment. Encore Boston Harbor: $38.7M (2021), $20.2M (2022), $70.6M (2023), $32.7M (2024), $26.9M (2025); $189.1 million over five years, $130.2 million over 2023–25. Five-year totals elsewhere: Las Vegas $1,029.8M; Wynn Al Marjan Island (UAE) $892.3M across 2024–25; Macau $604.4M; other $261.5M. Total $2,977.1 million.
- CNBC, “Wynn Resorts CEO Craig Billings goes one-on-one with Jim Cramer,” March 21, 2025 (quoted remarks at approximately 6:00).
- Wynn Resorts fourth-quarter 2021 earnings call transcript, February 15, 2022.
- Wynn Resorts second-quarter 2026 earnings call, August 4, 2026; transcript via Investing.com; webcast replay at investors.wynnresorts.com.
- Wynn Resorts Form 10-K filings, 2023–2025: $994.4 million in common stock repurchases and a $1.03 billion reduction in long-term debt over the period.
- Wynn Resorts, Form 8-K press release, February 15, 2022; sale completed December 1, 2022.
- Wynn Resorts Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, leases note: initial base rent $100 million per year, 30-year term, 1.75% annual escalator; 2026 lease payments including payments in lieu of taxes, $128.8 million.
- Wynn Resorts, second-quarter 2026 results, August 4, 2026: cumulative cash contributions to the Wynn Al Marjan Island joint venture of $1.06 billion; expected opening September 2027.
- The Boston Globe, “Wynn Resorts puts Everett expansion on hold,” May 9, 2024.
- CNBC interview with Craig Billings, February 2022.
- Massachusetts Gaming Commission, Region A Economic Development evaluation report (2014), documenting Wynn’s licensing commitments: 3,287 full-time-equivalent jobs, benefits of roughly $11,500 per worker per year not including “healthcare contributions paid directly to unions,” an 86.3% year-five retention rate, tuition reimbursement, and day-care partnerships near the casino.
- Delivered figures: Encore Boston Harbor full-time employment from Massachusetts Gaming Commission quarterly workforce reports; East of Broadway commitments and status from Gaming Commission development filings (February 2022) and The Boston Globe (December 2025); benefits per worker, retention, and tuition reimbursement figures from company data provided in negotiations. The 1,900-job tally covers East of Broadway, the Revolution stadium, the Docklands hotels, and Beacham Street, from Gaming Commission and municipal development filings and Boston Globe reporting (January 2026).
- Wynn Resorts first-quarter 2026 earnings call, May 7, 2026; transcript via The Motley Fool.
- Wynn Resorts, second-quarter 2026 results, August 4, 2026: 741,098 shares repurchased at an average of $101.20 for $75.0 million; $48.1 million contributed to Wynn Al Marjan Island, $1.06 billion life-to-date; $0.25-per-share dividend declared August 4, 2026.