Ohio-based casinos and racinos announced their revenues from gambling activities for November. Hollywood Casino Columbus is the venue that reported the highest turnover for a second consecutive month.
Its numbers, however, seem to have dropped, as compared to its financial performance in November, 2013. In fact, all Ohio’s gambling venues that were open last November marked a decrease in gambling revenues. This was mainly attributed to the fact that five more racinos have opened doors within the territory of the state since then.
Steve Gallaway, chief executive of Gaming Market Advisors, a prominent Denver-based company that specializes in the area of gambling industry research, stated that when new facilities are launched, this inevitably influences the already established ones in a negative manner.
The Ohio Casino Control Commission announced that all four casinos that were open in November, 2014 generated a total of $62.8 million.
As for racinos revenue, the Ohio Lottery Commission stated that it grew by the impressive 145.4% to reach the amount of $60.3 million. This significant rise was mainly due to the fact that a total of seven racinos operated in the state last month. By comparison, Ohio had only two facilities of this kind a year ago.
Gallaway shared that Ohio’s gambling market posted a 30% increase, as compared to last year’s numbers. According to him, this points to the fact that there is still interest in gambling activities and the market will keep on “maturing”.
It was announced that turnover from both casinos and racinos totaled $123.1 million in November, which is 29.9% more than the amount that was generated last year.
Yet, as already mentioned, the Hollywood Columbus posted a 4.1% decrease in its revenue, as compared to November, 2013. Last month, the casino earned the amount of $16.8 million.
Bob Tenenbaum, currently a spokesman for Hollywood Columbus, stated that the company is really pleased with the fact that it posted the largest turnover in the state. Yet, he said that two months could barely be called a trend.
Scioto Downs marked an 8.8% decrease in revenue to $10.3 million. Ashley Redmon, a spokeswoman for the racino, shared that the drop is partly due to the bad weather conditions in November. She also pointed out that “there was one less Friday than last year”. Redmon stated that, all in all, they are happy with their performance.
Horseshoe Cleveland, which usually generates the largest monthly turnover, marked a 20% decrease in November. Its revenue amounted to $16.2 million. This drop was mainly attributed to the competition from its neighboring venues – the ThistleDown Racino and the Hard Rock Racino, as well as to the launch of Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley Race Course.
ThistleDown marked a 32.8% fall in revenue to $8.9 million. As for Hard Rock and Hollywood Mahoning, they had not been launched by November 2013.
