The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) saw itself meeting with a panel of executives from Boyd Gaming on Wednesday. The reason behind the meeting? The approval of Boyd Gaming’s purchase of Valley Forge Casino for $280 million. During this presentation from Boyd Gaming, the panel brought up the topic of online gaming several times. One of the reasons for the company wishing to purchase Valley Forge Casino is to also be able to offer online gaming. In fact, the CEO of the company, Kevin Smith told the Control Board that “online gaming is important to us”.
He then went on to inform the Board that prior to selling its 50% stake in the Borgata online casino, Boyd successfully ran this platform for three years in New Jersey. Moving forward, he said that Boyd would like to replicate that same success with launching a gaming website for the online community within Pennsylvania. Of course, the representatives from Boyd Gaming also pointed out several other opportunities that their purchase of Valley Forge could bring.
The first of these opportunities included the potential to bring sports betting to the masses of the state. This will, naturally, depend upon the Supreme Court’s ruling on the subject, which is expected in the coming months. Furthermore, it will give Boyd Gaming a chance to re-establish its own footprint within the Northeast.
It didn’t take long for the PGCB to go ahead with their approval of the operator change request, following the presentation.
Future of Valley Forge Casino
With the approval of Boyd Gaming’s purchase of Valley Forge casino, this puts the establishment in a great position. In fact, Valley Forge has already begun benefitting from the Pennsylvania law that passed last October. Several provisions were brought forth in the new law to increase revenue at both this casino and the Lady Luck Nemacolin casino. For a one-time payment of $1 million, Valley Forge was able to bypass the requirement that deemed anyone entering the casino to be a guest of the hotel there or to pay a fee to use the casino’s amenities. An increase in the number of slot machines and table games was also written in to the new law.
These changes have seen revenue at the casino increase dramatically in the proceeding months. However, partnerships between casinos and online gaming developers are few and far between for the moment. That being said, it’s possible that PartyPoker could unite with Valley Forge Casino. For now, this is just a rumour, although it could potentially become reality.
That being said, it’s the belief that partnerships will be made more official in the coming months, following the decision of the PGCB relating to the number of online gambling skins each licensee is able to provide. The only three official pairings that are known for now are between Parx Casino and GAN, Sugar House Casino and Rush Street Interactive, and Rivers Casino and Rush Street Interactive.
