Share
As the landscape of Pennsylvania online casinos continues to shift, the drama involves a new player, bet365 Casino. The entry of bet365 is an intriguing proposition with many variables amid a stellar opportunity.
While bet365’s likely motivations behind this expansion of its United States operations are clear, bet365 has also been more deliberate than other predecessors. The challenges that bet365 Casino will face in Pennsylvania greatly depend on its goals and the steps it will take toward them.
Snapshot of the Pennsylvania online casino market pre-bet365
Via several metrics, Pennsylvania has the healthiest market for regulated US online casinos as July 2024 matures. For example, in terms of monthly average win reported by licensees, Pennsylvania is the most lucrative such market in the country.
Pennsylvania’s online casino market finished June with $195.6 million in revenue. May’s total of $216.5 million was the second-highest monthly total for online casino win in Pennsylvania. May 2024 was also the fourth consecutive month in which that total surpassed $200 million.
While the pot is significant, shares in it are nowhere near equitable for the 11 licensees. In June, top earner Hollywood Penn National reported more than 42 times the amount of win the licensee at the bottom, Mohegan Sun Pocono, did.
In fact, the top four licensees in win for June all individually won almost twice what the fifth-place licensee took in. A big part of the reason for that disparity is the brand power under those licenses.
The players on the Pennsylvania stage
With the addition of bet365 Casino, 22 individual online casino brands legally operate in Pennsylvania. Most of those operate under the license of a brick-and-mortar gaming facility although not all do so.
Pennsylvania reports win by licensee, not individual brand operating under those licenses. Thus, it’s difficult to tell with precise certainty exactly which apps are dominating the market because in many cases, multiple apps use the same license.
For example, both BetMGM Casino and DraftKings Casino operate under the license of the Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course in Grantville. Penn’s own Hollywood online casino brand also shares that license.
Despite that lack of detailed data, it’s possible to infer which brands are the likely market leaders with a broad overview of the data available. Other than the aforementioned BetMGM and DraftKings, the numbers suggest that other significant players include:
- BetRivers Casino
- Borgata Casino
- Caesars Palace Casino
- FanDuel Casino
- Stardust Casino
- Tropicana Casino
Bet365 is now operating in Pennsylvania under the license for Presque Isle Downs & Casino in Erie. As long as that remains the case, it will be possible to pinpoint exactly how much bet365 is winning from players each month and, thus, how it is faring among its competition.
While the numbers make for an interesting horse-race comparison, market share in terms of the part of the total statewide online casino win across Pennsylvania that a licensee represents isn’t an accurate gauge of the health of an online casino brand in the commonwealth. That’s a different conversation.
Market share metrics in proper context
When it comes to a business analysis for the Pennsylvania online casino market and bet365’s entry, market share is more of a gauge of which companies are probably most profitable. It isn’t an accurate measurement for whether a brand is profitable on its own.
To reach that result, more data is necessary. Mainly, the cost of operation in Pennsylvania for bet365. It’s important to note that monthly win reported by bet365 is akin to raw sales in other industries.
That’s the sum of money that bet365 must pay all of its expenses including taxes out of. The analysis would begin rather simply with whether bet365’s expenses for operating an online casino in Pennsylvania outweigh its monthly win.
As bet365 is unlikely to ever open its books to the extent necessary to ascertain that, it’s possible that bet365 could still turn a profit even if it isn’t among the market share leaders. If bet365 limits its ambition to merely making money in Pennsylvania, a big market share is simply gravy.
That premise becomes more favorable upon consideration of the potential cost of going for the jugular.
The high price of winning
The reason you don’t rock the boat when you are on it is that you’ll take yourself down with it. It’s an apt analogy for a potential domination mission for bet365 in Pennsylvania.
Other brands like BetMGM and FanDuel have a multi-year head start on bet365 in Pennsylvania. Yet other competitors like BetRivers and Hollywood have physical gaming facilities in Pennsylvania that share their branding, which Bet365 does not.
Trying to overcome those disadvantages could require enormous capital and there is no guarantee that such measures would produce the desired results. An attempt to carve out enough of a niche of the market to sustain itself instead seems far more feasible.
Even that is no guarantee, though. On the other hand, Pennsylvania is important enough that an attempt is necessary for bet365 to honestly assess its brand strength in the US.
Pennsylvania as a cornerstone for bet365
Because Pennsylvania is by some measurements the most lucrative online casino market in the US, it’s difficult for a company like bet365 to make a go of it in the country if it had not broken into Pennsylvania. It would be like a hotel choosing not to place itself by any major roadways.
Calling the United Kingdom home, bet365 is trying to avoid joining a growing list of foreign companies that have attempted to expand their online gambling products into US markets only to eventually reverse course. In a potential point of differentiation, bet365 has been more methodical in its progression than many of those companies.
New Jersey was bet365’s first US market in 2019. Pennsylvania will represent the first US expansion since then.
At this time, bet365 has not announced any plans to further the march into Michigan or West Virginia. While the motivations behind a comparatively slow approach are unclear, it could be that bet365 is being intentionally deliberate in its focus.
Letting five years pass between ventures into new markets bears the advantage of letting the product mature in the previous market(s). That produces a more accurate analysis of how the customer base views the product.
Despite sharing a border, New Jersey is not Pennsylvania. The bet365 Casino app will have to make some adjustments to carve out its niche in its new home.
Unique challenges in Pennsylvania
Because of the greater land mass within its borders, Pennsylvania is both more populous and more sparsely populated than New Jersey. That means broader demographics with bet365’s potential customer base and the possibility of new demographics altogether.
For example, when it comes to marketing efficacy, more people mean more potential exposure. At the same time, the greater population also means more potential competition for ad space.
Because of the head start that other operators have and the brand awareness they command, it’s fair to question where bet365 will find a pocket of unreached players in Pennsylvania. There are bet365 Casino bonuses to help with the marketing. While bet365 might want to convince players to add its online casino to a rotation with other brands, it’s still not the only voice clamoring toward that end.
Ultimately, if bet365 will buck the trend and firmly establish itself in the US, a Pennsylvania online casino product is essential. The success of that venture will depend on chiseling a sustainable slot in the market for itself, a task that is easier stated than undertaken.
