Kansas Casinos Up 603% To $341m In 2012
May 9, 2013 12:37 pmRecently, the American Gaming Association released its nontribal casinos figures for the whole of 2012, revealing a 4.8% increase in revenue to $37.3 billion. Last year’s total was second only to that of 2007, prompting the association’s president, Frank Fahrenkopf to declare:
“By almost all measures, our industry is expanding and growing, which is good news for our employees and the communities where they live and work.”
According to a report, the most substantial growth was recorded in the Midwestern state of Kansas, where gross casino gaming revenue was up by a massive 603.7% to $341 million, from $48 million in 2011. Kansas legalized casinos in 2007, with its first casino, the the Boot Hill Casino in Dodge City, opening up two years later. All told, the state now has a total of three casinos, including the Kansas Star Casino in Mulvane and the Hollywood Casino in Kansas City.
Unusually, however, the state’s casinos are actually state-owned, with Kansas’s legislature allowing the state lottery to oversee the privately run casinos. In 2012, the casinos subsequently brought in $92 million in taxes for state coffers, which was a 605% increase from the previous year.
Another success story highlighted by the American Gaming Association report was the state of Pennsylvania, which saw a 4.6% increase in revenue to nearly $3.2 billion. In 2006, when Pennsylvania opened its first casinos, gross revenues was only $32 million. That year, Atlantic City’s gross revenues peaked at more than $5 billion but has since sunk to $3.1 billion in 2012. As Joe Weinert, senior vice president of Linwood-based Spectrum Gaming Group, explains:
“Pennsylvania smartly put most of its casinos along and near the New Jersey border to take away the many patrons who were already spending the money in Atlantic City.”
Overall, US casinos paid $8.6 billion in taxes to the state, although the AGA’s casino revenue figures do not include the $26.1 billion generated by Indian casinos in 2011.