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Pennsylvania To Add Table Games To Its Casinos

Posted on April 28th, 2010

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Pennsylvania’s casino industry is fast gaining ground. After seeing encouraging numbers from slots revenues in late 2009, legislators legalized table games at the beginning of this year. Many of the nine casinos existing in Pennsylvania have already obtained licenses to operate table games and the facilities are expecting to have them operational by summer.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board is speeding up the licensing processes and has been conducting community hearings for the past two months, as part of the process to allow table games.

One of the major reasons for expanding gambling in the state is for the creation of jobs, an important factor in a state where unemployment is at its highest. The Mount Airy Casino Resort said they will be hiring around 500 new workers for the positions of card dealers, restaurant and housekeeping staff and security and surveillance personnel and 330 of these will be permanent while the rest will be part time.

Another facility, the Rivers Casino, one of the newest in the state, expects to spend $7 million to renovate the North Shore slots parlour to accommodate the additional 42 blackjack tables, 24 poker tables and a few tables for the less popular roulette and craps. The work needs hiring for 80 new construction workers to be manned by 7 local subcontractors.

The full time positions of table games managers and supervisors, card dealers, cashiers, credit clerks, security and surveillance team will need 458 new employees.

Rivers Casino will have to shell out approximately $24 million including the $16.5 license fee to finally feature table games at their facility. Casino officials have already announced plans to hold a number of prestigious poker tournaments.

The table games would also produce new taxes for the state that would finance government projects and help ease property taxes. Tax collected from Rivers Casino, for instance, is helping fund the Consol Energy Centre, the future stadium for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

At the start, Rivers Casino’s below par performance caused some degree of anxiety to credit rating agencies over the casino’s capacity to meet its payments for the stadium, through its revenues, but Rivers was able to recoup lately, producing revenue of $21.6 million in March, climbing from $17.2 million in February.

As soon as table games in all nine casinos are fully functioning, Pennsylvania could become the new gaming centre in the Northeast, rightfully giving Atlantic City casinos a run for their money.