For the first time ever, Pennsylvania’s commercial gaming industry cleared half a billion dollars in monthly revenue in March, bolstered by a record amount of iCasino play.
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board’s monthly financial summary released Tuesday showed total revenue of $515.3 million was collected by brick-and-mortar casinos, online casinos, sports betting operators, truck stop video game terminal operators, and fantasy sports contests.
Their combined revenue easily surpassed the previous high of $475 million just set in December. With a blended tax rate of 41% when the varying rates from different forms of gaming are combined, state and local governments earned $212.4 million as a result of Pennsylvanians’ gambling losses last month.
The different revenue streams broke down as $311.3 million from slots and table games play at casinos, $148.2 million from online casinos, $50.6 million from sports betting, $3.8 million from VGTs, and $1.4 million from fantasy contests.
Sports betting volume up 20.6% over February
The $50.6 million in sports betting revenue was the adjusted, taxable amount after deductions for promotional credits from the operators’ $66.5 million in gross revenue. It came on March sports handle of $723.5 million, which was boosted by the NCAA Tournament to gain 20.6% over February’s handle. However, the volume was only barely above the March 2022 handle of $715 million.
As is often the case, FanDuel was far and away the leader among the 13 online sportsbooks, which was one less than in the past due to Churchill Downs Inc. shuttering its TwinSpires site in February. FanDuel had $278 million in handle, with $30.3 million in gross revenue and $23.8 million in adjusted revenue.
DraftKings had about two-thirds of FanDuel’s handle but only about half its revenue amount. Its digital site accepted bets totaling $185.6 million, with gross revenue of $14.7 million and taxable revenue of $11.9 million.
BetMGM was also among operators getting a nice March bump, to gross/adjusted revenue of $6.2 million/$2.9 million based on $55 million in handle.
The surprise of the month, however, may have been Caesars Sportsbook, which surpassed Barstool Sportsbook for fourth place in handle for the first time. Betting at Caesars surged 37.3% from February to $38.3 million, while Barstool was up just 10.2% to $35.1 million. Barstool led in revenue, however, with $2.7 million/$1.9 million compared to $1.7 million/$970,942 for Caesars.
Among other top sportsbooks, BetRivers improved in all aspects over February by reaching $27.6 million in handle and $2.2 million/$1.5 million in gross/adjusted revenue.
Wind Creek/Betfred was a smaller digital operator reporting a monthly loss, with -$16,428 in revenue on its modest handle of $1.4 million.
Online casinos break revenue record by 10%
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board doesn’t provide precise breakdowns spelling out iCasino revenue for each of the 17 operators the way it does for sportsbooks. Its summary shows that they combined in March for $104.8 million from online slots play, $40.5 million from online table games, and $2.9 million from iPoker.
The combined $148.2 million represents a 10.1% increase over the former iCasino record of $134.6 million, which in December helped set the state’s former overall gaming high.
New monthly highs have been set multiple times from online gambling in the past year. Its popularity due to convenience and constant accessibility has helped make up for relatively flat revenue in the brick-and-mortar casino industry, which hasn’t increased despite the addition of new casinos.
The 17 venues that can be visited across the state combined for $225.4 million in slots revenue and $85.9 million from table games last month. The total of $311.3 million for March was 12.2% above the figure for the shorter month of February, but it was barely larger than the $309 million that was reported in March 2022 before Parx Shippensburg was even open. That mini-casino had revenue a little above $3 million last month, indicating the others actually made slightly less money collectively than a year earlier.
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