Ohio's Casino Market Down 6% in October

There now appears to be worrying signs that Ohio’s casino market may have reached its saturation point after October’s revenue figures marked a two and a half-year low for the state. In total, revenues generated from The Buckeye State’s four casinos was down by 6% to $62.6 million in October, according to the latest results released by the Ohio Casino Control Commission.
Reporting the largest drop in year-on-year revenues was the Jack Cleveland Casino, whose business shrunk by 13% to $15.4 million in October. In addition, Jack Cincinnati Casino also noted a significant 10% revenue contraction to $14.3 million, while Hollywood Casino Toledo was also down by 1.5% to $15.3 million.
In fact, the only venue bucking the negative trend was the Hollywood Casino Columbus, which posted a moderate revenue improvement of 2% to $17.6 million in October, compared to the same month in2015.
Despite the gloomy figures, Ohio’s casinos have produced $669.4 million in statewide revenues for the first ten months of this year, an amount off by just 1% versus the same period of time in 2016.
In the meantime, the state has also had to start getting used to receiving lower levels of tax revenues from its casinos. In the third-quarter of 2016, for instance, casino tax revenues continued their steady decline since peaking in Q3 2013, when all four of Ohio’s casinos were open for business. In Mahoning County and the city of Youngstown, for instance, third-quarter revenues fell off from $364,856 in 2013, to $356,532 in 2014, $341,680 in 2015 and now $333,397 in 2016. As Kyle Miasek, the deputy finance director of Youngstown, explained recently:
“It leads me to believe that the saturation point has been achieved, and we probably will not see those numbers peaking beyond that October ’13 high. Eventually, you flat line. You get to the point where no more growth occurs, and you start to see year-over-year small declines” as the novelty wears off.”