Indiana casinos and their online sports betting partners raked in a combined $229.5 million in April, according to figures from the Indiana Gaming Commission. It was the best April for the industry since $239.2 million was won in April 2011, before neighboring Ohio had any casinos.
The casino floors and poker rooms scooped about $209.4 million, while the retail and online/mobile sportsbooks won nearly $20.1 million last month. Indiana began sports betting in late 2019, so last month was the second April for the books. April 2020 had less than $2 million in revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Below is a look at Indiana casino revenue in April over the past decade.
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The $209.4 million in revenue from table games and slot machines was the most since 2013.
Indiana casinos and their sportsbook partners won $1.62 billion during 2020, down nearly a fourth compared to 2019 when there was no pandemic. Through the first four months of 2021, the industry has won more slightly more than $800 million, so things are turning around.
Indiana rebounding along with other gaming states
According to the American Gaming Association, U.S. commercial gaming revenue topped $11 billion in the first quarter of 2021, matching Q3 2019 as the industry’s highest-grossing quarter ever. The revenue was a 4.1% increase over the industry’s pre-pandemic performance in Q1 2019.
The AGA called the performance a sign of “accelerating recovery for the industry.”
“Gains in gaming revenue were largely driven by the industry’s performance in March [2021], the highest-grossing revenue month in history for U.S. commercial gaming,” the AGA said in a recent announcement. The group also said that the “comeback is ahead of schedule.”
Sports betting has played a significant role in turning things around. Traditional brick-and-mortar casino games generated 90% of their Q1 2019 revenue.
“Sports betting revenue for Q1 2021 saw a quarterly U.S. record of $961 million, up 270% over Q1 2020 and surpassing 2019’s full-year total of $909 million,” the AGA said.
Indiana neighbor Michigan also launched online casino gambling in January.
Per the AGA, by the end of the first quarter of this year, 97.8% of commercial casinos in the U.S. were open, though most still had capacity restrictions. Those restrictions are slowly easing heading into the summer. All of Indiana casinos are open, but capacity restrictions are still in place.
