The online gambling market in Pennsylvania is just over a year old and still growing. Basically, every month, the industry has seen an uptick in earnings. The Gaming Control Board recently released the October earnings and revealed that $57.3 million was earned. Online poker did well, generating $2.4 million and sports betting generated just over $41 million. Add in fantasy sports more than $3 million in earnings and you have more than $104 million generated in October.
A Busy Month for Casinos in Pennsylvania
October was a busy month for operators. For casino and poker gaming combined, the totals came in at just over $59 million. September earnings barely crossed $57 million. Total wagers in table games crossed the $1 billion mark for the very first time and slots reached just over $1.1 billion. For the month, so much gaming took place that sites were able to pay almost $25 million in taxes, locally and state level combined.
Penn National and Rivers continue to battle it out for the top spot in the market. Rivers remains the leader but only by a short margin. Rivers has the majority of the market by only 6.8 percent in October. PlayLive! is a newbie to the market and they saw a huge uptick in revenue earnings. BetAmerica offers sports betting via the Presque Isle Downs and October resulted in an almost 20 percent increase in earnings.
For Rivers, they saw just over $14 million in slot game revenue and just over $2.5 million via table games. They were up 3 percent from September and a whopping 424 percent from the previous year. For Penn National, they earned $9.3 million from slots and just over $5 million from table games. Monthly totals were up 5 percent while year-over-year was up 689 percent.
Table game revenues really jumped in October and this can be partially attributed to the launch of live dealer gaming by Evolution Gaming. The Rivers Casino was one of the first to launch these games and they saw a nice increase in table game revenue numbers.
Sports Betting is Booming
In October, the sports betting side of the industry generated $47.8 million. Online wagers came in at just over $41 million and retail was $6.3 million. These totals are pretty remarkable considering that sports betting only pulled in just over $13 million the month before.
Sports betting was up across the nation due to an increase in sporting events. Many leagues have been concluding their seasons after a break due to the pandemic. Football also started a few months ago and is still ongoing.
The October betting handle was just over 13% higher than September but only 10% when looking at the number of days. The state was able to see an impressive game month to month and we expect these numbers to only continue to increase.
It will be interesting to see in the coming months if the gains continue and just how large the online gambling market will get in Pennsylvania. Eventually, they may give New Jersey a run for the top spot in the US.
