The Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem held the top spot for table games and brought in USD 15.3 million in revenue. However, the biggest gain in dollars was at SugarHouse which recorded an USD 825,555 increase in table games revenues. The casino is due to open a USD155 million expansion next year.
Overall, the state collected USD 9.8 million in tax revenue from table games. However, despite the increase in table gaming revenues, it wasn’t enough to offset the year-on-year decline of 4.2% for casino gambling overall. The decline is mainly due to the drop in popularity of slot machine gaming.
Pennsylvania opened its first casino in 2007 and it recently overtook neighboring New Jersey in overall casino earnings. However, there are worries that New Jersey’s recent legalization of online gambling could have a negative impact on the Pennsylvania market.
Richard McGarvey from the Gaming Control Board said, “From our point of view, we don’t know – it’s too early to tell if it’s having any impact. There’s just no real good information on it, on who are the players, if they’re the kind of people who go to casinos or not.”