During the past month, state officials in Maryland released the total figures from the four land-based poker rooms in the state. The numbers released for the combined four establishments totaled $3.5 million in revenue. This total is an increase of 29 percent over the $2.7 million in revenues for the same period last year. The information is public data from the Maryland Lottery that shows the amount of last year’s revenue. Though there may be extenuating circumstances for the increases in revenues at Maryland casinos.
Additionally, over the first ten months of this year, these four poker rooms had a revenue of $37 million. Though during the same period through October in 2016 these same rooms show a 28.4 percent gain for this year.
One of the differences in the revenue may reflect on the fact that prior to December of 2016 Maryland had three poker rooms. Then in December of last year, a $1.4 billion casino the MGM National Harbor Casino opened. This new casino has a 39 table poker room that is responsible for expanding the live poker market in Maryland. The state now with this additional casino making it four live poker rooms has a total of 122 tables. The comparison between 2016 and 2017 through October of both years’ data for each casino’s revenues shows:
2016 Revenues
• The Horseshoe Casino in Baltimore had revenues of $7.4 million.
• Hollywood Casino in Perryville had revenues of $930,000.
• Live Casino saw revenues of $20.5 million.
2017 Revenues
• Horseshoe Casino in Baltimore saw revenues this year of $4.6 million.
• Hollywood Casino in Perryville had revenues of $969,000.
• Live Casino had a revenue this year of $13.9 million
• The MGM National Harbor Casino saw revenues this year of $17.5 million.
The poker room manager of MGM National Harbor, Johnny Grooms has said the poker market will continue to grow in an interview with Card Player earlier in the year. Mr. Grooms also said during the interview that the large population of both Northern Virginia and Southern D.C. are not aptly served. He went on to add North Carolina to his list of locations where poker rooms are lacking. Another issue he commented on was that casino competitors north of Maryland have done well. But Mr. Grooms added that the patterns of where people go to places like casinos can be dictated by traffic.
There are two things that have changed in Maryland involving poker rooms or casinos that have made a clear difference. The first change is the state did not permit live dealer games until 2013. The second thing in that time frame was casinos gained the ability to remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Before that this also was not permitted and again could make a clear difference in the total amount of revenue shown over the past two years. In fact, in the four years since these changes were made in Maryland, it has become one of the top poker room markets nationwide.
