The auction for Pennsylvania’s ‘mini-casino’ licenses lasted all of 60 seconds
Pennsylvania’s casinos exactly know what to do with the money when bestowed with a long-shot bet. At a legislatively mandated auction for a new mini-casino license, none of the state’s 13 casinos expressed their interest to pay a minimum of $7.5 million for a satellite gambling outlet which can be otherwise called as Category4 casino.
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board last year accomplished $127.7 million from the sale of five mini-casino licenses. The board has officially regulated only two of the licenses so far, and yet to make other facilities. The legislature passed a law this year to conduct another round of auctions to test the market anew for satellite casinos. The market for new live casinos licenses in Pennsylvania is officially depleted.
Prohibition limits to mini-casinos
The new legislation laws block new casino halls within 40 miles of an existing or mini-casino. Many corporations have also made some stringent rules to prohibit the development of new casinos. The exclusion zones from these elements cover all of the southeastern and southwestern parts of the state, and most of south-central Pennsylvania.
The auction for mini-casinos licenses was concluded in less than 60 seconds. With no point of interest shown from bidders, David M.Barasch, the board’s chairman abolished further auctions. Only the state’s 13 licensed casinos are permitted to construct satellite casinos, which can contain as many as 750 slot machines and as many as 40 table games.
The auction was held in response to legislation laws regulated this year that demands the state to organize as many as five rounds of bidding for the licenses, commencing no later than September 4th and ending by December 31st. If no bids are received in any rounds, the auction process will be terminated.
The law demonstrates that the new casinos can be built no closer than 40 miles to an existing casino or satellite casino, leaving a very small unclaimed area left in Pennsylvania where avid bidders could locate a new casino, except for some scattered populated areas of central and northern Pennsylvania. More than 1000 of the state’s 2500 municipalities are dispassionate in hosting mini-casinos.
The mini-casinos are unusual to Pennsylvania, which authorized them in a 2017 law that reasonably enlarged gambling opportunities in the state, including authorized sports betting, internet gaming, video gaming terminals in truck stops, and interactive lottery.
The state in June formally recognized the first satellite casino license for Penn National’s Hollywood Casino Morgantown in Berks County, and last month approved the Live Casino Pittsburgh in Westmoreland County. The Westmoreland site will be managed by Stadium Casino LLC, whose flagship live casino and hotel Philadelphia is under construction at 900 Packer Ave in Philadelphia.
Penn National also enjoys the privilege to construct a second mini-casino in the York Galleria Mall. Mount Airy Casino Resort won the right to place a satellite casino north of Pittsburg, and Parx Casino in Bensalem plans to build a satellite casino in Shippensburg.
The decree for the new satellite casino auctions was included in Senate Bill 712, a medley of spending and revenue amendments to the fiscal code that the Government of Tom Wolf signed into law.