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Maryland Live! may hurt Hollywood Casino’s take

Alexander Pyles//May 7, 2012

Maryland Live! may hurt Hollywood Casino’s take

By Alexander Pyles

//May 7, 2012

When the Maryland Live! casino opens at Arundel Mills mall on June 6, the state’s biggest gambling facility will be on line.

But that facility is likely to take a big chunk out of Hollywood Casino‘s business in Perryville.

Stephen L. Martino, director of the Maryland State Lottery Agency, said that Maryland Live! could take more than 20 percent of Perryville’s business. He couldn’t predict how long that slump would last.

“We expect Perryville’s numbers to go down,” Martino said. “I think the question is, we don’t know how long that’s going to last. I would expect an initial decline in the 20-to-25 percent range as new competition comes on line. Then we’ll have to see.”

The Perryville casino generated $10.7 million in revenue in April, according to numbers just released by the lottery agency. A 25 percent hit would reduce that total to just over $8 million.

Martino said the lottery agency expected the casino at Arundel Mills would have a greater impact on Hollywood Casino than at Worcester County’s Casino at Ocean Downs in Berlin.

Debate in the General Assembly over a potential sixth state casino — in Prince George’s County, likely at the sprawling National Harbor development — centered on how much, if any, business such a facility would take from Maryland Live! and a casino that could be built in downtown Baltimore.

The facility at Ocean Downs and a future casino at Rocky Gap State Park are considered to be far enough away from other facilities to not significantly feel the impact of the others, which all sit just off Interstate 95 up and down the central portion of the state.

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