Parx Casino To Become First Pennsylvania Casino To Accept Sports Bets
For gambling enthusiasts wondering which of the Keystone State’s 12 casinos would become the first to offer sports betting for Pennsylvania residents and visitors there, we finally have an answer for you: it is going to be Parx Casino in the Philadelphia area.
In fact, Parx, which was recently revealed to have been partnering with the business-to-business gaming company GAN (based in the London, England), is thus far the only one of Pennsylvania’s roster of existing casino properties – not to mention the state’s most profitable in terms of revenues – to actually take concrete steps toward offering a sports betting product. This could be considered even more a coup for the company in light of recent events, as the May 2018 decision by the US Supreme Court to side with New Jersey and overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA), put PA on course to pass one of the most comprehensive sports betting legalization bills anywhere in the country. The Parx deal with GAN looks to exploit the open nature of the new Pennsylvania sports betting laws by offering not just an on site sportsbook for patrons at the casino proper, but will also leverage the UK-based company’s tech know how to roll out a legal online sports betting product as well.
However, before you get too terribly excited about all this news, even with all this being said, there is as yet no explicit timeline for a “grand opening” that has been revealed by either Parx or GAN, leaving would-be sports bettors to ponder when exactly the Philly sportsbooks – physical or digital - will actually be open for business. Lest you worry that this could be a case of sports betting “vaporware,” all indications point toward the hold up being the result of the somewhat lengthy petitions process currently being undertaken by the state of Pennsylvania’s gaming authorities, which are still accepting applications from all the Keystone State casinos interested in getting in on the sports betting action. Meanwhile, officials are still hashing out the finer details of the regulations that will govern the newly minted PA sportsbook industry too, so, as we know, that whole process is liable to put the brakes on too many quick moves in any one direction.
That being said, the prospect of being able to share an electronic wallet at both the Parx online casino and sportsbook outlets is exciting to say the least, and should help the company convert players from the more profitable (for players) sports betting side to the more profitable (for the company) casino side of the operation. This is something that is well known to savvy sports bettors in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the country that have been using legal offshore sportsbook sites such as Bovada, BetOnline, SportsBetting, BetDSI and 5Dimes for years. Simply put, a smart bettor has more chances to actually win bets placed on sports, where knowledge of teams, athletes, matchups and even things like weather conditions can help you place a successful wager than having to rely exclusively on the luck of the draw with casino games, where pretty much everything is determined by luck.
The details of the deal between Parx and GAN are not all that clear at this time, but what we do know so far is that GAN will not actually be providing the logistics for this first of the Philadelphia sportsbooks, but rather the platform upon which the sports betting outlets will be based. It can almost be thought of as the skeleton around which the muscle of a sportsbook will added by a third party company that will handle the day to day betting line listing, odds making and so on. Likely candidates for that job include national gaming companies such as SBTECH and IGT, both of which are currently setting up shop as the vanguard in the budding legal sports betting marketplace here in the US, a market that was – as you all know – dominated pretty much exclusively by legal overseas based operators for the better part of two decades.
Similar to the situation of SBTECH and IGT, GAN’s involvement with Parx – if their arrangement is as successful and popular as it by rights should be – can ideally position the UK firm to take the lead in its own way by offering what the company in a press release issued early Monday “an omni-channel sports betting solution.” The technical ins and outs may be forthcoming and, even when that information is more widely known, the particulars may be way too far over the heads of most folks who just enjoy betting on sports as a hobby to appreciate full. Still, the fact remains that so much new development (from a business angle and in terms of sheer technical innovation) is happening in this dynamic segment of the broader legal online gambling marketplace is exciting in and of itself. At any rate, GAN can expect to move into the front line of consideration for other state looking to implement more wide open sports betting reforms a la Pennsylvania if they Parx partnership works out to the satisfaction of everyone involved – and that includes PA’s legions of hard core sports bettors as well.
As for what other Pennsylvania casinos are looking like in terms of bringing their own sports betting products to market, mum is the word for now. Gaming and entertainment giant Boyd Gaming told local reporters that its board has discussed plans to open a sportsbook at the Valley Forge Resort Casino, but the terms of those plans were vague (perhaps intentionally), as the PA Gaming Control Board is keeping all the details of the application and petition process close to its figurative chest for the time being. In fact, even the status of Parx’s sports betting license petition are not officially available at this time, and, like the saying goes, it don’t mean nothing until you’ve signed on the line.
Still, for all the big promises of Pennsylvania’s sweeping sports betting reforms, it nevertheless remains the case that the Keystone State has also set the regulations to include what is probably among the highest costs of doing business as a sportsbook anywhere in the country. Indeed, the state of Pennsylvania has levied a whopping licensing fee of $10 million just to get in the door and then has installed what is basically a 36 percent tax on sports betting revenues – not handle, or the money taken in by the ‘book, but 36 percent of adjusted net revenues. It’s enough to make prospective sportsbooks operators take pause for sure, and those barriers to entry at least partially explain why PA was so generous in allowing online sports betting as well as online casino operations in the wake of a PASPA repeal.
The thinking goes that if players get accustomed to winning by betting on the Phillies, Eagles or Steelers at a legal Pennsylvania sportsbook (where, a bit of common sense tells us, operators will necessarily have to adjust the lines to maximize the money they can earn off every bet given the increased likelihood of a win for bettors) they can be more easily shunted over to the accompanying online casino, where the operator makes the bulk of its profits. That strategy, slimy as it might seem when seen under this light, actually makes a good deal of sense when you get right down to it: the high rate of confluence between sports fans and sports bettors (something like 46 percent of all diehard fans will at some point place bets on their favorite teams and about half that amount are estimated to exclusively watch sports for the purposes of betting on them) makes legal sportsbooks a fantastic tool to attract and retain a larger customer base for more profitable segments of the casino’s operation.
SportsBettingPennsylvania.com thinks by being out in front of the race to open the first of the new Pennsylvania sportsbooks, Parx is in the spot to set the tone for the rest of the market that will, seemingly, inevitably follow, giving observers, analysts and ground level sports betting hobbyists a good idea of how the entire situation will shake out. There are some challenges to be sure, but how things develop will to a large extent determine what kind of sports betting action we will see in the Keystone State – and beyond – in the years and months to come. Frankly, if Parx can pull of a win with its current set up in Pennsylvania, then things bode well for the entire sports betting industry elsewhere in the country, as other states are not nearly so, shall we say “needy,” than PA appears to be in terms of fees and taxes.
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