For all the pomp and bombast that accompanied the opening of Revel in Atlantic City last year, a casino three hours south of New Jersey that received far less hype when it opened around the same time last year has been the one raking in the accolades.
A year after opening its doors, Maryland Live! at Arundel Mills has the kind of bragging rights that no other casino in the region can claim. Last month, Maryland Live! pulled in $55 million in revenues, earning the top-earning casino honors in the region and beating out every casino in the Northeast, including all 12 of Atlantic City’s casinos.
Monique Griego of CBS Baltimore reports that Maryland Live!’s impressive May haul was $8 million clear of Atlantic City’s highest earning casino, The Borgata. Of the $55 million it earned for the entire month, $37.5 million came from slots with the remaining $17.6 million coming from table games.
Shocking as it is that Maryland Live! is beating some of the biggest casinos in the region, it’s strong revenue run could still be in its infancy. The casino’s May revenues doesn’t include earnings from poker because, oh, wait, it doesn’t have it yet. That’s fixing to change though because the casino is in the middle of construction that will add a 50-table poker room inside the casino, giving gamblers from the area even more reason to go and spend their disposable incomes enjoying the thrills of gambling.
“That’s going to be the final piece of the puzzle,” Neal Sloane, vice president of table games, told Griego.
There’s still no definite timetable as to when Maryland Live!’s poker room will open. But rest assured, when it does, it’s sure to attract even more people to go to the casino, a fact not lost on Sloane. “So we’re still growing our database, growing our customers so profits continue going to grow,” he said.
Maryland Live!’s success in building its profile at a rapid pace is a testament to what happens when you do things the right way, a lesson that Revel should’ve learned a long time ago.
