Sports wagering booms in Pennsylvania; Casino crime wave in Philippines

Spurred by mobile wagering, the Pennsylvania sports-betting market exceeded $300 million in handle last month. Said PlayPennsylvania.com analyst Dustin Gouker, “Plagued with relatively high gaming taxes and early hurdles to its online launch, Pennsylvania’s future as a legal sports betting jurisdiction was murky at the beginning. But despite the issues in its infancy, the state has proven to be attractive for operators and the market is truly beginning to flourish.” Handle was $316.5 million which translated to $20.5 million in revenue. The ranks of casinos accepting sports wagers were swelled by the addition of DraftKings at The Meadows and Unibet at Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs. Online sports books generated $267 million of overall handle or 84%.

The FanDuel sports book at Valley Forge Resort Casino led online books with a staggering $150 million, followed by Rivers Casino Philadelphia ($32.5 million), Rivers Casino Pittsburgh ($30.5 million), Parx Casino ($22.5 million), DraftKings ($16 million) and Fox Bet at Mount Airy ($13.5 million). Rivers Pittsburgh’s $9 million was first in walk-up wagering, followed by Parx ($8 million), Hollywood Casino ($4 million), Presque Isle Downs ($4 million), South Philadelphia Race & Sports Book ($3.5 million), Valley Forge ($3 million), Harrah’s Philadelphia ($3 million), Mohegan Sun ($2.5 million) and sundry others. Pennsylvania is still well behind New Jersey but it’s early days yet.

* Still another reason for U.S. gaming companies to avoid the Philippines: There have been 42 gambling related kidnappings of 49 people—and the year’s not over yet. The most frequent reason for abduction is that visiting Chinese players take out credit from loan sharks (since there’s a limit on how much currency they leave the fatherland with), then are abducted when they cannot pay it back. There’s also a sad, human-trafficking underside. As GGR Asia reports, regarding online casinos (POGOs), which “were said mostly to have involved Chinese POGO workers allegedly abducted by their employers and forced to go back to work when they attempted to run away, the Manila Bulletin reported. Such people had typically complained they had been duped about their terms of employment and had had their travel documents retained by the people that had recruited them.” President Rodrigo Duterte would do well to train his law-and-order tendencies upon this crime wave.

* I lived in Las Vegas from 1999 to 2016 and it never struck me as a particularly Yuletide-friendly place. WalletHub disagrees, however. It has named Sin City the sixth-best place in which to celebrate Christmas. True, Vegas was only 5oth in the price of an Xmas party ticket but it ranked first in toy stores and hobby shops per capita, first in the cost of a three-star hotel room (make a note of that), first in gift shops per capita and 16th in the number of Christmas tree farms. (Getting our Christmas tree home intact was always an adventure for us but we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.) So ho ho ho, Las Vegas is having the last laugh.