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Pennsylvania Gaming Dashboard – August 2020

Insight | Data

Pennsylvania’s igaming market could hold on to the huge gains it made during lockdown if July’s figures are anything to go by.

iGaming Business and Ficom Leisure are delighted to present the Pennsylvania iGaming Dashboard, providing a monthly breakdown of the latest figures from the Keystone State’s regulated gambling market.

The data will be updated monthly following the official release of figures from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. 

Despite all land-based casinos being up and running again during the month, igaming did not lose out as a result of the increased competition for gamblers’ attention.

In fact, online casino GGR rose on a month-on-month basis to $54.4m, up 8.6% on the $50.1m of June. This was, however, slightly below the market’s all-time high of $55.8m, generated in May.

On a year-on-year basis the rise was enormous, though to compare this July’s total against last July’s $0.8m is not especially meaningful given the latter was the first month of igaming in the state.

July’s igaming performance is especially impressive given the strong rebound in the land-based casino market during July.

The biggest earner in the land-based segment, slots, made revenues of $165m in July, down only 17.4% on February, the last full month before lockdowns came into force, and about the same percentage on last July.

Slots also made up the bulk of igaming GGR at $39.4m, up 7% on June and also ahead of the previous high of May.

Though online table games revenues were up on June, these were down from the May high, while poker GGR has fallen for two months in a row, suggesting it is in these verticals that attention has started to wane as other options came back into play after restrictions began to ease.

Looking at the sports betting numbers, while these remain subdued, they are gradually rising as more sports come back online.

Online betting rose to $6.9m last month, up only slightly on June’s $6.8m but more significantly on May’s $4.8m and April’s $2.9m. After three months with no activity, land-based betting returned last month, achieving GGR of $1.3m.

There were significant shifts in the market shares of the state’s sports betting operators in July. Longstanding market leader FanDuel, which is partnered with Valley Forge Casino, lost its top spot to DFS rival DraftKings, which operates via a tie-up with Meadows.

The former saw its share fall to 16.9% in July, down from 42.7% the previous month, while the latter’s share rose to 23.4% from 20.2% over the same period.

Rivers Casino Philadelphia rose to third place with a market share of 14.7% in July, up from 8.9% the previous month.

Ficom Leisure also provides monthly figures on New Jersey in the New Jersey iGaming Dashboard, Indiana in the Indiana iGaming Dashboard, and Iowa in the Iowa Gaming Dashboard

It also provides quarterly figures, available via iGamingBusiness.com, on the Spanish online market in the Spain iGaming Dashboard, on the Italian market in the Italy iGaming Dashboard, and on the Portuguese market in the Portugal iGaming Dashboard.

A European corporate advisory firm, Ficom Leisure is a specialist in all segments of the betting and gaming sector.