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SugarHouse Casino's Table Games Arrive
Trial Run, Opening Set For Later This Month
PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia is getting one step closer to having a casino within city limits.
Table games are on Monday's delivery list at the long-awaited SugarHouse Casino in Fishtown.
Blackjack, roulette, poker ’ all of the table games have been delivered and are being opened by casino employees Monday.
The SugarHouse's will host a trial run of its 1,600 slot machines and 40 table games on Sept. 20 and Sept. 22, Fox 29's Steve Keeley reported.
If things go well, the casino would then open to the public the next day.
The table games revenues released last week for Pennsylvania casinos showed three facilities near Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were the big winners.
Parx Casino in Bensalem led the pack with $166,228 a day, followed by Harrah's Casino in Chester with $140,870 and Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, with $127,188 per day.
Because the state's nine casinos opened on different days, and none of them were open for the entire month of July, it's difficult to gauge whether they met state projections. But it appears that out-of-state gamblers boosted revenues because the casinos with the most daily buses from New York and New Jersey, such as Sands and Mount Airy, made good showings on the initial report by the list of tables winners.
Unlike slot machines, which require little labor to maintain and are taxed at a rate of 55 percent tax, each table game requires four to six employees to operate.
For that reason, table game revenues are taxed 16 percent, which includes 14 percent taken by the state and two percent that goes to the host municipality.
State officials are counting on $320 million in table games tax revenues over two years to help balance the state's $28 billion budget. But that includes the $165 million in table games license fees from 10 casinos, including the soon-to-open SugarHouse.
The current state budget projects a tables tax take of $75 million, amounting to just over $6 million per month.
Casinos have hired nearly 4,500 people to operate tables in nine casinos, but the biggest problem so far has been finding enough dealers to man the roughly 660 tables statewide.