An interesting new development is “playing” out at Pennsylvania’s casinos, including Harrah’s Chester.
There’s a distinct shift from slots to table games. At Harrah’s today, the mighty World Series of Poker will make its debut in Chester with a big-time tournament. It’s billed as the richest sporting event on the planet.
You can read Tim Logue's advance here.
This shift in players’ preferences and leaning toward the fairly new table games as opposed to slots has some reverberations for the state, in particular when it comes to revenue and the tax relief that was the reason legalized gambling was brought into Pa. in the first place.
Slots revenue has been fairly stagnant across the state for more than a year, increasing for the most part only because there are more tables.
No place has this been more acute than at Harrah’s, where slots play has been off for almost two years.
The good news is that those numbers are somewhat offset by the increase in table games play, and the move by casinos to push for more tables.
The problem for the state is that their tax take on table games is not as lucrative as it is for slots. When the state, pushed by Gov. Ed Rendell, rolled out its big expansion of legalized gambling back in 2004, it included a hefty 55 percent levy on slots. That is the money that created the fund that was the impetus behind the move, tax relief for weary Pennsylvania home owners. Some revenue also helped the state’s ailing horse-racing industry, as well as casino host cities, such as Chester.
But when the state further scratched its itch for gaming and gave the green light for table games, its take on that amounted to only 16 percent.
This year the state says gambling revenue will translate to $776 million in property tax relief. The average household will get somewhere in the vicinity of $200.
Or about what is wagered on a single hand in some of those World Series of Poker Events.
Tax relief from gaming is down from $616 million in 2010.
Has gaming been a bad bet for Pennsylvania? It’s hard to make that argument now, but the trend toward table games and away from slots is something that should concern those who pushed legalized gambling in the form of slots as a cure to the state’s longtime property tax issues.
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