Pennsylvania is one of only three states in America that offers online poker and provides revenue figures on a monthly basis. It allows the online poker industry as a whole to track the results and growth – or lack thereof – in the still-burgeoning market. Delaware and New Jersey are the only others that regulate online poker and release revenue.
For Pennsylvania in 2022, those numbers showed growth for online poker. It wasn’t much, but it was better than a decline. The igaming industry as a whole, though, grew by more than 22% from 2021 to 2022. Altogether, it shows that the market has yet to reach any kind of cap.
Let’s look at some of the revenue figures and charts.
PA iGaming Hits Milestone
The Pennsylvania online poker market seems to have found its comfortable place, showing revenue at $32M to $36M annually. The market is relatively new, only having launched later in 2019, but the three years since have shown little change.
Online poker hit its high mark in 2020, the first full year of poker online and the pandemic year. Revenue dipped nearly 10% the following year, but it rebounded slightly in 2022.
Looking at the chart for 2022, the year started well for online poker but began falling and barely made it through the year with more revenue than the year before. December helped put it over the top, though, with more than 3.6% growth from November to December.
-PA online poker (December 2022): $2,633,491 (up 3.7% from $2,540,506 in November)
The igaming market, including poker and online casino games, sports betting, video game terminals, and fantasy sports, continued its industry-wide growth. Total igaming numbers fluctuated a bit through the year, taking a concerning dip in June, but pulling itself up by its bootstraps to have five consecutive positive months to end 2022.
Total igaming in Pennsylvania has yet to reach its potential, growing at a solid pace thus far. And along the way, it exceeded $3B in little more than three years – a significant milestone.
-PA total igaming (December 2022): $134,578,285 (up 4.6% from $128,639,234 in November)
PA Needs Partners
Seeing how the online poker part of the igaming sector in Pennsylvania is stuck, one might think the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) might want to talk to New Jersey, Delaware, Nevada, and Michigan about joining the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA). Michigan just joined and launched its first interstate player pool via PokerStars.
The PGCB has yet to show interest – at least publicly – about signing on to MSIGA. However, the state has three online poker operators that would want to combine sites as soon as technically possible: PokerStars, WSOP/Caesars, and BetMGM.
The result may not be a massive change, but it could easily push online poker revenue from the $30M-ish range closer to $40M per year. It would allow the PGCB to make the most of that segment of its igaming market.
As for the total igaming market, it’s doing just fine. It nearly doubled its revenue from 2020 to 2021 and then pushed it more than 22% higher in 2022. Quite a bit of growth potential remains in Pennsylvania.
