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Casino CEOs Say Aggressive Casino Competition Shrinks Market Shares Of East Coast Casinos

Posted on May 27th, 2010

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The East Coast Gaming Congress held in Atlantic City had nearly 600 people in attendance, including the 6 executives of the different casino companies from across the United States.

The CEOs were given 30 minutes each to speak and show presentations at the conference about their respective firms and projects. The casino officials said gambling expansion in many states has made it more daunting to thrive in the very competitive East Coast gambling market. Atlantic City used to be the only city that enjoyed the distinction of being the gambling hub in the East Coast.

But Atlantic City, at first adversely affected by the economic recession, now finds itself beleaguered by competition from gambling facilities from all corners of the region. It is being threatened by the closure of as many as three of its 11 facilities if the situation gets worse.

Casino operators from West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania admit that with the emergence of new casinos everywhere, it has become imperative for them to compete for market shares that are diminishing. Delaware has started low-limit table games at its race track casinos in preparation for its full opening on Friday, the start of the Memorial Day weekend.

New York’s Aqueduct Racetrack may soon have a new slots parlor, as well as the Belmont Racetrack. Pennsylvania now has nine slots casinos which will soon add table games. Cecil County in Maryland will have its first casino this fall, and slots facilities in West Virginia will have table games soon.

Each of these facilities is trying to take gamblers away from each other, although they are hoping to see a situation where they can draw their own new customers. Don Marrandino, eastern regional president of Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. said, “We have to fight this explosion of gambling all around us. We have to continually reinvent ourselves as a destination.” Harrah’s Entertainment owns four casinos in Atlantic City.

But John Finamore, Penn National Gaming’s senior vice president of regional operations thinks that the East Coast’s market situation has not yet reached a point where the region has become full of casinos that not one more can be put in, but he added, it is certainly crowded, and tougher. The President of the American Gaming Association, Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. said that in six months alone, 12 casinos in the East Coast that offer only slots will add table games, and that figure does not include casinos operated by Indian tribes. He said the effect of that would be extensive.

Finamore informed the gathering that Penn National’s Hollywood Casino Perryville off Interstate 95 in Maryland will have its debut in October. He said most of the potential customers will be Delaware residents, thousands of whom drive by that site everyday of the year. Penn National’s Charles Town Casino in West Virginia is planning to offer table games in its facility in two months. The casino will target the Asian gamblers who bet high stakes at Atlantic City casinos.

Finamore said there are roughly 400,000 to 5000,000 Asians in the West Virginia market who don’t like to play slots, but prefer the high-rolling table games in Atlantic City, and Charles Town Casino aims to tap that market.

The president of Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, Pa., Bob de Salvio, said he thinks the casino was able to attract new patrons that have not gambled in any casino before, but he predicts that Sands would lose business to slots at Meadowland Racetrack should New Jersey pass such legislation that is still being strongly contested, since a large percentage of their customers come from northern New Jersey.