Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board Announces Subsequent Round of Category 4 Casino Auctions

HARRISBURG, Pa., March 9, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board announced today that a "subsequent round" of Category 4 Casino Auctions will begin on March 21, 2018.  That decision comes after today's auction concluded with no bids being received for a Category 4 Casino License.

The State's Gaming Law establishes that a "subsequent round" of auctions will be held if all 10 available licenses are not auctioned off in the initial round.  The Board's procedures for the auctions provides, "If at any time there are no required minimum bids made at an initial auction, the Board will consider the initial auctions to be completed," and thereafter, the Board will schedule the first of any "subsequent auctions."

In this second round of auctions, the two holders of a Category 3 Slot Machine License (Valley Forge Casino Resort and Lady Luck Casino Nemacolin) may participate in conjunction with all the Category 1 or 2 License holders, even if those holders have already won a Category 4 Casino Auction.

The subsequent round of auctions will start on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. prior to the start of its Board meeting.  The meeting will be held in the PGCB's Office of Hearings and Appeals located in the Strawberry Square Complex, 2nd Floor (adjacent to the Food Court), Harrisburg.

The Board plans to continue to hold auctions if eligible bidders continue to submit qualified bids which start at $7.5 million to reserve a geographic area within which a Category 4 Casino could be placed.  The schedule of second round of auctions to be held in the Board's Public Hearing Room are as follows:

March 21, 2018
April 4, 2018
April 18, 2018
May 2, 2018
May 16, 2018
May 30, 2018

The start time for all auctions will be 10:00 a.m. with the dates subject to modification at the Board's discretion and as circumstances dictate.  Any modification of the dates will be posted to the Board's website, www.gamingcontrolboard.pa.gov. The Board will stream the auctions live via its web site.

The results of the first four auctions:

• January 10, 2018: Mountainview Thoroughbred Racing Association, LLC, which operates Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course, was the high bidder with a bid of $50,100,000. The center of that Category 4 location is in the Borough of Yoe in York County.
• January 24, 2018: Stadium Casino, LLC, which holds a Category 2 license and will construct a casino in Philadelphia, was the high bidder with a bid of $40,100,005. The center of the Category 4 location is in Derry Township in Westmoreland County.
• February 8, 2018: Mount Airy #1, LLC which operates the Mount Airy Casino Resort, was the high bidder with a bid of $21,188,888.88. The center of that Category 4 location is in the City of New Castle in Lawrence County.
• February 22, 2018: Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment Inc., which operates the Parx Casino in Bucks County, was the awarded bidder with a bid of $8,111,000. The center of that Category 4 location is in South Newton Township in Cumberland County.

About the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board:
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board is tasked to oversee all aspects of the state's casino industry, along with oversight of new gaming initiatives to the Race Horse Development and Gaming Act recently approved through the signing of Act 42 of 2017.

The Commonwealth's casino industry currently consists of 10 stand-alone and racetrack casinos in operation, along with the two smaller resort casinos.  These facilities collectively employ 18,000 people and annually generate approximately $1.4 billion in tax revenue from slot machine and table games play. The largest portion of that money is used for property tax reduction to all Pennsylvania homeowners.

Additional information about both the PGCB's gaming regulatory efforts and Pennsylvania's gaming industry can be found at www.gamingcontrolboard.pa.gov. You can also follow the agency on Twitter by choosing @PAGamingControl.

CONTACT: Doug Harbach or Richard McGarvey 
(717) 346-8321

SOURCE Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board