On October 31, The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board issued three more sportsbook licenses, these to the SugarHouse Casino, Harrah’s and the River Casino in Pittsburgh.
They joined Parx Casino in Bensalem Township and the Hollywood Casino in Grantville as the five licensed operators begin hustling to be the first to start taking sports bets in Pennsylvania.
At this stage, most gaming observers are expecting a PlaySugarhouse sportsbook to do it with talk of it opening initially with over-the-counter betting at its Pennsylvania Casino sometime in December and then going online with both a browser website and mobile apps in early January.
The fact that PlaySugarHouse was one of the earlier sportsbooks to start taking bets when neighboring New Jersey became the first state to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision to throw out the PASPA law is one of the reasons why there are widespread expectation that it will win the Pennsylvania sportsbook race.
The other is that it has been performing well in New Jersey and is currently the third highest NJ sportsbook revenue earner behind daily sports fantasy giants DraftKings and FanDuel who are all using Kambi software which enables them to offer bigger and better sportsbook betting menus than most of their rivals.
One of the big differences between New Jersey and Pennsylvania sports betting is that while NJ is only taxing their sportsbooks 8 percent, Pennsylvania is asking for 36 percent – and this will almost certainly lead to the new Pennsylvania PlaySugarHouse sportsbook having less competition than it has in New Jersey.
It is interesting to note that DraftKings has not applied for a Penn license and while FanDuel has, neither seems to have any immediate plans to open sportsbooks in Pennsylvania.