The State of Pennsylvania Generates Close to $400 Million Courtesy of Expanded Gambling

Expanded gambling in Pennsylvania brought the state close to $400 million. This is a whopping amount of money considering the state passed the law to expand gambling just last year. The $385 million in total were generated over a period of 1 year, surpassing all expectations and the state’s budget estimates.

In late 2017, the state of Pennsylvania passed a gambling expansion bill which made satellite casinos, sportsbooks and online casino gaming legal, among several other changes. There was a licensing process, where several casinos received their licenses for online casino gambling, the cash started rolling in and has eventually surpassed budget estimates. In fact, over $1 million a day was generated since late 2017.

Pennsylvania generates $385 million in revenue from fees for licensing and petitions.

Breakdown of the Whopping $385 Million

Interestingly enough, the $385 million revenue that was generated this year were mostly from gaming petitions and licensing. It is important to note that most of the industries have not even started working yet, so a strong increase in the gaming revenues is expected to be seen once all the new changes come into effect and all services start fully operating.

For this year, 2018, PlayPennsylvania had revenues generated from online keno, lottery and virtual sports. Using official statistics, it has been estimated that the state generated over $23 million from virtual sports, keno and lotto combined.

With online casino licensing process, interactive gaming petitions, and poker, the state managed to generate $94 million by interested parties. There’s a total of $78 million for casino licensing which was paid in advance, while $60 million was brought by sports betting petitions. The earnings were rounded up by daily fantasy sports tax revenue, which generated $1.4 million.

The sports betting will move forward and the online gambling operations will begin in 2019. This means that even more revenues are about to be generated. The first to launch sports betting was Hollywood Casino at Penn National, but as from the 1^st of January, more operators are expected to begin with their operation.

The Official Press Release by the PlayPennsylvania.com’s Analyst

Jessica Welman, PlayPennsylvania’s analyst issued a statement saying that the most notable aspect of such a significant revenue that has been generated is that it was generated almost completely on fees rather than gambler’s tax revenue. She added that there’s clearly a huge interest in the enormous market in Pennsylvania so far to generate these fees.

The thing is, operators have started applying for online poker gaming, casino gaming, sportsbooks, and online casino gambling licenses since late last year. The state’s lottery and daily fantasy sports industry also expanded and led to tax revenue increase this year.

Considering the new law added satellite casino to legalized gambling, auction profits helped the money earned by the state in 2018 to increase. Since then, operators could bid for operating a mini-casino. Several operators did bid for their licenses earlier this year, generating the state a ton of money. In fact, the mini-casino auction profits brought the state $128 million.