Maryland’s six casinos combined generated over $169 million in revenue from slot machines and table games during July, a decrease of $4,501,777 (-2.6%) compared to July 2023. Revenue in June also declined by 0.5%, a total of $162 million was reported. One casino executive pointed the finger at Virginia for loss of business.
Casinos in the Commonwealth
The Commonwealth of Virginia currently has three casinos open. One casino, Rivers Casino Portsmouth, is a full-service casino with plans to add a hotel soon, according to their website. Two temporary casinos, Hard Rock’s Bristol Casino and Caesars Virginia’s Danville Casino, are preparing for full resort grand openings by year’s end.
During a meeting with the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency this week, an MGM executive provided a look at how their National Harbor casino is being affected by loss of business.
MGM National Harbor President and COO Melonie Johnson told the commission that June revenue for the property was down 1.3% followed by July down 0.2%.
“It’s mainly attributable to a decline in table game revenues,” Johnson said. “Our volume was still there, but I can’t control hold. Last year we had a very high hold. We beat a lot of customers, and this current year, we did pretty bad.”
Johnson explained that a lot of customers have voluntarily joined the casino’s self-excluded list. Self-exclusion allows a person to request to be excluded from legalized gaming activities within a casino. “We also have patrons that are just not playing anymore,” Johnson added.
One way to combat the drop in customers is cross-property marketing with other MGM properties. Johnson said the company is bringing in customers from Las Vegas, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Mississippi, and Ohio.
Johnson also touched on how Virginia casinos are affecting business.
“We know that there is competition in Virginia with the casinos, and we’re keeping our eye on that. We have lost some business to Bristol (Casino),” Johnson said.
Hard Rock’s Bristol Casino is 367 miles southwest of MGM National Harbor. Rivers Casino Portsmouth is 196 miles from MGM and Caesars Virginia 245 miles away.
Virginia cities Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, and Portsmouth all passed casino referendums in November 2020 by large margins to build casinos. Voters in Richmond rejected a 2021 and 2023 referendum to build a casino in the state capital. The City of Petersburg is now taking a swing at getting a casino project passed during the November election this year.
Virginia also launched online/mobile sports betting in January 2021. Sports wagering operators in the state have handled over $16 billion in bets on sports from basketball to bare-knuckle fighting. Maryland launched retail sports betting at casinos in December 2021 and online/mobile service in November 2022.
Gambling Resort Comes to Dumfries, Virginia
Meanwhile, Churchill Downs, Inc., is moving forward with plans to open The Rose Gaming Resort in Dumfries, Va., by year’s end, just 30 miles from National Harbor.
The new gaming resort isn’t considered a casino under Virginia law. The facility has a hotel, restaurants, special events space, meeting rooms for companies, and a gaming floor packed with Historical Horse Racing (HHR) machines. The resort will not have slot machines or table games.
HHR machines are very similar to traditional casino slot machines. They just operate differently. Standard wins on a casino slot are based on a Random Number Generator or RNG. Wins on an HHR machine are determined by the device randomly selecting a past horse race from a database to see if the player wins.
The Rose Gaming Resort was first under development by Colonial Downs. In 2022, the Louisville, Kentucky-based gaming company, known for its signature event, the Kentucky Derby, agreed to purchase the assets of Peninsula Pacific Entertainment (P2E) for $2.4 billion. Some of the assets included Colonial Downs and seven Rosie’s Gaming Emporiums in Virginia.
