Ohio Casino Floors Grew While iGaming States Lost Ground

Ohio’s 11 casinos and racinos grew gaming revenue 46 percent from 2015 through 2024, the only large market in a Deutsche Bank same-store sample that beat 32 percent inflation. Carlo Santarelli, then the bank’s gaming analyst, put that result in a January 24, 2025 investor note on 80 older regional casinos. Pull Ohio out of the set and the rest of the group finished down 0.2 percent.

Investors still talk about “regional” as one book. The sample says it is two. States that kept casino games on the floor compounded. States that put the same games on phones transferred the growth and left the buildings behind.

Eighty Casinos and a Misleading Average

Santarelli wrote that the domestic regional market “is often discussed as a flat to slightly positive growth market, as measured by gross gaming revenue.” He called that description misleading because it hides where revenue actually moved, and because new rivals, new laws, and extra supply can swamp a statewide total.

He built a cleaner set. The 80 properties had to clear four screens so a decade of results would describe the old floor, not a new license or a neighbor’s opening.

HOW THE 80 CASINOS QUALIFIED

• Age cutoff: Each property had to have opened before 2013, so the window would not mix newborns with legacy floors.
• Local rivalry: Nearby brick-and-mortar competition, in-state or across a border, had to be minimal.
• Law changes: Casinos that gained or lost from legislative shifts were left out.
• Public books: The property had to sit in a state that publishes detailed monthly revenue.

Iowa supplied 16 casinos, the most in the set, then Louisiana with 14, Missouri with 13, and Ohio with 11. Indiana had seven. Pennsylvania had five. Michigan, Maryland, Kansas, and West Virginia had three each. Maine had two. None of the double-digit states had seen a large expansion of their casino base in recent years, which is why the screen could treat them as same-store books.

Ohio Alone Accounted for a Fifth of the Growth

Seven states in the subset grew terrestrial casino revenue from 2015 through 2024. Four posted notable declines. Ohio and Maryland, Santarelli wrote, “have experienced, far and away, the most meaningful growth” and were the only two markets that, on a same-store basis, kept pace with or beat inflation over the period.

Ohio’s 46 percent gain was 20 percent of all the growth in the survey. Maryland’s casinos opened in 2010. Ohio’s came online in 2012. Both were still young enough, in a 10-year lookback, to look like growth markets rather than fully harvested ones. Maine, a later legalization, grew 25 percent. Iowa grew 20 percent. Missouri grew 10 percent. Indiana and Kansas each grew 2 percent.

The other side of the ledger was not noise. Louisiana fell 17 percent. West Virginia fell 15 percent. Pennsylvania fell 12 percent. Michigan fell 7 percent.

SAME-STORE GGR, 2015 THROUGH 2024

Once those 11 Ohio casinos and racinos were subtracted, the overall measure flattened to negative 0.2 percent. The “flat regional” number was an average of a compounding Ohio book and a set of older floors that did not keep up with prices, let alone with phones.

A 9.7 Percent Floor Drop in iGaming States

Santarelli tied the weak side of the map to internet casino games. Across 11 iGaming-enabled states, brick-and-mortar casino revenue declined 9.7 percent over the 10 years. He flagged Michigan, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia as the floors hit hardest. Strip Ohio, which had no iGaming, and those three internet-casino states, and the remaining brick-and-mortar set rose 4.5 percent.

That 4.5 percent still lagged 32 percent inflation. It was, at least, growth on the property. The iGaming states’ 9.7 percent decline was a transfer. Statewide “gaming” totals can rise while the building that pays rent, dealers, and local tax on admissions does not.

By the time Ohio’s House Finance Committee heard opponents of an iGaming bill in June 2025, Santarelli had stopped treating the cannibalization fight as an open question. Mark Stewart, president of the National Association Against iGaming, put the analyst’s words into the hearing record.

We stopped taking this ‘debate’ seriously long ago. The data, in our view, is and has been overwhelmingly obvious for some time.

Carlo Santarelli, then Deutsche Bank gaming analyst, quoted in June 3, 2025 NAAiG testimony

The same filing said Deutsche Bank’s read on land-based casinos in Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, relative to 2019, was so clear “that we struggle to see how, but not necessarily why, one could reach a different conclusion.” The data is and has been overwhelmingly obvious is now a line in Ohio’s legislative file, not only a sell-side note.

NAAiG’s Ohio math is partisan, and it should be read that way. The group said casinos operating in Pennsylvania before and after iGaming launch saw cannibalization of more than 25 percent, and that nearly 3,700 workers at those older properties lost jobs, a 26 percent drop in direct casino employment. FanDuel, Fanatics, and the Sports Betting Alliance testified for the Ohio bill. Boyd Gaming filed as an interested party. The split in the hearing room matched the split in the 80-casino table.

Phones Out-Earned the Buildings in Pennsylvania

Calendar 2025 did not reopen Santarelli’s 2015-through-2024 window. It tested whether the two books still behaved like two books after the note was published. The American Gaming Association’s State of the States 2026 report, released May 12, 2026, put U.S. commercial gaming at $78.62 billion in 2025, up 9.1 percent, with 34 of 38 states plus the District of Columbia setting records.

The mix inside that record is the point. America’s 493 commercial casino locations in 27 states posted a record $51.06 billion from traditional casino games, up 2.3 percent. Sports betting reached $16.89 billion, up 22.6 percent. iGaming across the seven states with lawful online casinos reached $10.73 billion, up 27.6 percent. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Michigan still accounted for nearly 90 percent of that online total.

Pennsylvania’s internet games rose nearly 28 percent to $3.46 billion and, for the first time, passed the state’s commercial land-based casinos, which took $3.36 billion and fell 0.8 percent. New Jersey crossed the same line. Ohio, still an iGaming-free commercial market, reported $3.50 billion in total commercial gaming, up 6.3 percent. Traditional casino and racino games there were $2.46 billion, up 2.8 percent. Sports betting added $1.04 billion, up 15.5 percent.

Michigan’s statewide commercial total hit $5.04 billion, up 20.1 percent, because iGaming rose 26.5 percent to $3.09 billion. The three Detroit commercial casinos took $1.27 billion, down 1.3 percent. Baltimore-Washington, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Boston were among the land-based markets the AGA listed as declining.

THE 2025 FLOOR VERSUS THE PHONE

A state can print a record and still run two businesses. Pennsylvania’s record is an online story with a slightly smaller building underneath it. Ohio’s record is still a floor-and-racino story with a sportsbook stacked on top. Treating those as the same “regional” print is how the 0.2 percent average gets born.

Why Ohio Is the Next iGaming Fight

Ohio is the prize because it is the sample’s growth engine and it still has no internet casino. House Bill 298, sponsored by Rep. Brian Stewart, a Republican, and Rep. Marilyn John, would legalize and tax internet gambling in Ohio at 28 percent, ban online sweepstakes games, and leave the bill in the House Finance Committee, where it still sat in September 2026. A companion Senate bill set a higher tax. Neither had reached a floor vote.

Gov. Mike DeWine has opposed putting a casino on every phone. In the June 3, 2025 testimony, NAAiG quoted him calling iGaming “not an incremental increase in gaming” and warning that it puts a casino “in anybody’s hands.” He leaves office in January 2027. Stewart has talked about reviving the bill around that calendar, including a rule that would bar online promotional credits and push those incentives onto casino and racino floors.

That promo rewrite is the split in legislative form. If online credits have to be spent in the building, the sponsor is treating the phone and the property as rivals for the same wallet, not as one customer journey. NAAiG said its members include the owners of 7 of Ohio’s 11 casinos and racinos, plus Gaming and Leisure Properties, which it said owns five Ohio casino properties representing nearly a majority of the state’s gross revenue. The landlords and the legacy operators are not abstract stakeholders. They are on the committee witness list.

FROM THE NOTE TO THE HEARING ROOM

1. 2012: Ohio’s commercial casinos come online, inside the pre-2013 cutoff Santarelli later used.
2. January 24, 2025: Santarelli publishes the 80-casino note; Ohio is +46 percent and 20 percent of the sample’s growth.
3. June 3, 2025: NAAiG files House Finance testimony against HB 298 and quotes Santarelli on cannibalization.
4. July 22, 2025: Gaming and Leisure Properties names Santarelli to a new strategy and investor-relations post.
5. May 12, 2026: The AGA’s 2025 yearbook shows Pennsylvania iGaming at $3.46 billion, ahead of $3.36 billion on the land-based floor.
6. September 2026: HB 298 remains in House Finance; Stewart floats steering online promos into retail casinos.

Anyone can write a bill, Santarelli warned investors in a later Deutsche Bank note on Ohio, and getting it through is a different conversation. That warning still holds. The 2025 scoreboard is what the next governor will be handed, not a theoretical harm study.

The Analyst Who Mapped the Split Now Works for a Landlord

On July 22, 2025, Gaming and Leisure Properties appointed Santarelli senior vice president of corporate strategy and investor relations, a new job. He started August 18, 2025, reporting to President and Chief Operating Officer Brandon Moore. Triple-net gaming landlords collect rent on buildings. They do not collect a share of a skin’s hold on a phone in another state, unless the lease is written that way.

Peter Carlino, GLPI’s chairman and chief executive, said the firm had “known and respected Carlo’s research work on the gaming, lodging and gaming REIT sectors for many years.” He pointed to Santarelli’s view of GLPI’s original triple-net structure from the sell side, and to his network among investors, analysts, and operators.

We’ve known and respected Carlo’s research work on the gaming, lodging and gaming REIT sectors for many years. Carlo brings to GLPI an in-depth knowledge of the industry and its participants, having experienced GLPI’s original formation of the gaming triple-net-REIT structure from a research analyst and capital markets perspective.

Peter Carlino, chairman and CEO, Gaming and Leisure Properties, July 22, 2025 statement

A landlord that owns five Ohio casinos, if NAAiG’s count is right, lives on the winning side of Santarelli’s table only as long as Ohio’s floor keeps the games. iGaming that siphons slot handle off those properties is a rent-coverage problem, even if the operator’s statewide digital brand is up. That is why the overlooked party in the 80-casino note was never “the industry.” It was the building.

Maine Grew 25 Percent, Then Legalized Online Casinos

Maine was a winner in the 2015-through-2024 sample, up 25 percent with only two casinos that cleared the screen. In January 2026 it became the eighth state to authorize online casinos, when Gov. Janet Mills allowed LD 1164 to become law. The statute took effect July 15, 2026, with exclusive licenses for the four Wabanaki Nations. No real-money site had launched by September 2026. Caesars later expanded tribal partnerships it already used for sports betting, aiming at a market that still had no certified platform.

Maine is the small-state version of the Ohio choice, already made. The sample said a limited, later-arriving land-based market could still grow. The 2026 law says the next increment of games will not have to walk through a casino door. Pennsylvania and New Jersey have already shown what the mature version of that choice looks like: a record statewide print, and a land-based line that finally fell behind the phone.

Ohio still has the floor that carried a fifth of Santarelli’s growth. HB 298 is still in committee. The 2025 books are closed, and they did not merge the two regional industries into one.