Pennsylvania Casinos Down 1.7% To $264m In July

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has now released its casino figures for July, revealing a 1.7% decline in revenue to $263.86 million compared to $269.35 for July 2012.
The Northeastern state opened its first slot machine casino back in 2006, followed by the addition of table games in 2010. Pennsylvania now boasts 12 casinos across the state and during July table game revenues rose by 6.1% to $59.9 million, while slots generated 3.7% less revenue at $204.9 million.
Commenting on July’s results, Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board spokesman Richard McGarvey said: “For a number of years we were having those big gains and I always told people not to expect them year after year, the market will mature, you’ll stop adding facilities. I think it’s a good reflection of it this year, this is the first year we didn’t open anything new.”
In addition, three years is considered the average growth period in the casino industry, and so McGarvey also warned that table games revenues may also start leveling off soon. “Still, certainly it’s more of a growth area than slots,” he added.
Slots revenues have now declined for the seventh consecutive month and breaking the figures further, Harrah’s Casino in Chester recorded the sharpest drop, down 15% to $18.9 million, followed by the Meadows Casino down 12% to $19.5 million. Also reporting declines in growth was Mount Airy Casino in Paradise Township, down 5% to $13.5 million, Parx Casino down 3.5% to $30.8 million, and Sands Casino in Bethlehem down by less than 1% to $24.5 million. Meanwhile, Valley Forge Casino, which opened for business in April 2012, increased revenue by 57% to $5.5 million for the month.
Overall, for the fiscal year 2012-13 ended June 30th, Pennsylvania’s casino revenues have remained largely flat at $3.1 billion with slots revenue down 2% to $2.4 billion, and table games revenue up by 7.4% to $713 million.