It's an ironic coincidence that this answer is running back-to-back with yesterday's, about what the customer should do if they lose, or suffer some other mishap, with a winning (sports-betting) ticket. Today's answer has actually been a work-in-progress for two weeks, having taken today's guest columnist, Stiffs & Georges blogger David McKee, that long to elicit sufficient information from myriad sources in order to be equipped to answer your question, at least to the best of QoD's ability. David responds:
There’s no way of knowing, as it isn’t broken out into a discrete revenue category. In Nevada, Gaming Control Board regulations give restricted licensees 60 days in which to redeem the ticket-in/ticket-out vouchers, after which they must revert from a liability into an asset and be reported as revenue. For the big, nonrestricted licensees, they have until the expiration date printed on the TiTo voucher or 180 days, "whichever period is less," after which they have to book the revenue.
All unredeemed (and unclaimed) slot tickets are tracked at the casino cage. "Once a quarter, we send 75 percent of the balance from unredeemed and expired tickets to the state of Nevada," says Boyd Gaming spokesman David Strow. "The property is permitted to keep 25 percent of the balance to cover processing." The state gets the other 75 percent because of a 2011 law that deems the slot vouchers "unclaimed property" and puts the money into the state’s general fund. Luckily for the casinos, they are only taxed on the 25 percent they get to keep. "Other states," particularly Midwestern ones, "when the tickets expire, they revert back to the property and are taxed" as revenue, not treated as unclaimed property.
Not content to stop with Nevada, we also asked the second- and third-largest gaming jurisdictions in the country. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board’s Doug Harbach says that, in the Keystone State, "the casinos hold on to the vouchers for three years, and then they are turned over the state. Having said that, vouchers never expire and the ‘owner’ of that voucher always has the opportunity to re-claim his or her property from the state."
As for the Garden State, "I believe slot vouchers expire after one year and the money reverts to the casino. Originally there was no expiration date, but that was changed several years ago," says Dan Heneghan, public information officer for the Division of Gaming Enforcement.
"The TiTo policy varies from state to state," Caesars Entertainment spokesman Gary Thompson summarizes. "In some states the tickets never expire, while in others (such as Nevada) the tickets expire after 180 days. Most jurisdictions also remit a large portion of the expired ticket amount to the state (escheatment), and the amount can be as much as 75 percent to 100 percent of the value of the ticket. On average, the percentage [of slot winnings] that goes unredeemed by customers is less than one percent each month."
So it isn’t chump change. But, say, $1.5 million in unclaimed slot revenue in Atlantic City, split across eight casinos, ultimately doesn’t go very far.
