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Numbers down at Hollywood Gaming for January
VLT wagering down $4M from December
By ROBERT CONNELLY
AUSTINTOWN
Almost every number fell at Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley Race Course during January, monthly reports released Monday show.
The only number that did not fall was the average number of video lottery terminals, which has held steady at 866 for three consecutive months. The Austintown facility is owned by Penn National Gaming Inc.
That also was the case statewide for the seven racinos, which saw an uptick in the number of machines.
The numbers for Hollywood Gaming in Austintown for January:
$64,635,800 credits played, down more than $4 million, with credits won of $57,417,675, also down a few million dollars from December.
January’s percent payout was 89.34, down 0.26 percent, and the win per machine per day was $257, down from $267 in December.
Distribution of the net win, $6,893,145, was $4,561,022 to Hollywood Gaming, $2,309,203 to the Ohio Lottery Commission and $22,920 to problem gambling services.
The numbers concerned Alan Silver, Ohio University assistant professor of restaurant, hotel and tourism and a casino expert.
“It’s not great when you have a new operation. You want to constantly grow the revenue. There’s a newness factor. ... It should have a lot of excitement and buzz,” Silver said. “With Hollywood with the newness factor, I wouldn’t be very happy with it going in that direction, and I would hope to show at least a little bit of a growth in the first few months, like a small climb.”
Both Silver and Penn National spokesman Bob Tenenbaum said the winter weather didn’t have much of an impact.
“It’s hard to tell because we weren’t open last January,” Tenenbaum said of the Austintown racino. “Clearly there were a couple of pretty rough weather days that cut into our revenue slightly, but all in all we continue to be pleased with Hollywood Mahoning and Hollywood Dayton.”
During the last few reports, Silver has highlighted the lack of promotional dollars spent at Hollywood Gaming. January’s $324,980 was down from December’s $537,461 as the facility has used a number of free VLT play promotions in a row.
“There’s going to be some juggling around there to figure out the advertising and how to get people in the door,” Silver said. He said a key component of gaming facilities is repeat visitation.
“If we have a player that comes twice a week, the goal is to get them to come three or four times a week so that’s the way you’re going to grow revenue,” he said.
“We’ve got promotions going on pretty much constantly,” Tenenbaum said. “Typically we’re always going to have several promotions going at any given time.”
Statewide, there were $683,643,000 credits played, down nearly $28 million, and $609,686,529 credits won, down about $25 million. The win per day per VLT was $195 in the Buckeye State, down from $202 in December.
Numbers were down in January at the state’s four casinos except for Hollywood Casino Columbus.
Silver noted that the state’s seven racinos are about $1.5 million behind the four casinos in revenue for January. Overall, casinos went from $59.68 million in January 2014 to $64.81 million this January.
“With all this added competition, the four casinos are up 8.59 percent,” Silver said. “From 2014 to 2015, we have four racinos versus seven racinos, so that’s pretty good. So the casinos went up nearly 8.6 percent with three more racinos. ... That shows that the industry is growing.”