It has been 30 weeks since sports betting began at the Rivers Casino & Resort in Schenectady, New York, and the new action has been a great new source of revenue. These new highs have executives hoping this isn’t a volatile spike in their overall revenue trend.
When the pro football season began, sports betting became the casino’s biggest draw. The Rivers Sportsbook saw an incredible amount of action, which only increased as the postseason began.
The second week of the NFL playoffs saw the sportsbook draw in a record for sports gaming revenue. Then, two weeks later the amount of revenue doubled. This was followed by a dramatic decrease since the NFL season ended. The week after the Super Bowl, they had their worst week since opening, and two weeks later it was even worse.
The Rivers Casino & Resort is not the only facility seeing this pattern. All three non-Indian casinos in the state reported record highs in January, only to see revenues plummet in the first few weeks of February. Until March Madness begins, it is not expected that the trend will change.
Rivers general manager Justin Moore explained that the casino always expected to see declining revenues following the Super Bowl and that the casino is not concerned. There are thousands of roulette wheels and slot machines still operating, and those revenues will help to eventually “settle into normalized percentages” the amount of revenue the casino is receiving.
Since sports betting started at Rivers, total gross gambling revenue (GGR) has exceeded $4.05 million, while poker yielded slightly less than $3 million in GGR. Table games and slot machines overshadow both, bringing in nearly $95 million in GGR combined.
