Florida Poker Rooms See Increased Revenues

New laws that have allowed expanded poker in Florida seem to be paying off for the state’s poker rooms, which showed an immediate 35% increase in their month over month revenues from June to July. Florida’s poker rooms took in about $11.3 million in July, compared to just $8.4 million in June.

Florida recently allowed casinos, horse tracks, dog tracks and jai-alai frontons to begin playing true no-limit poker on July 1. Previously, buy-ins were limited to $100. In addition, the restrictions on the hours in which poker could be played at non-casino venues were relaxed; where these venues could previously only offer poker for 12 hours each day, they may now have poker for 18 hours on weekdays, and 24 hours on weekends.

These numbers do not include the Seminole card rooms, which are not required to share their revenue figures with the state. However, anecdotal reports seem to suggest that there has been similar growth in their rooms as well.

Among the other venues, the biggest haul was taken in by Palm Beach Kennel Club, which raked in $1,153,314 in July. In comparison, they made just $759,827 in June. That works out to an increase of nearly 52% in a single month.

Revenues weren’t up for every venue, however. At the Mardi Gras Racetrack and Gaming Center, the new rules actually restricted the hours in which they could offer poker when compared to their previous arrangements with the state. Accordingly, their revenues fell by about 5%. However, the Mardi Gras’ Wil Herrera said that this was actually a good result considering their new circumstances.

"When you take into account the 18% loss of hours, we were actually up 16%,” he said, referring to Mardi Gras’ revenue per hour. “We are also up over July 2009, so we are still trending upwards."

The relaxation of poker laws in Florida has led to a sudden increase in interest in holding major events in the state. Recently, Mike Matusow won the Florida state Poker championship, and the World Poker Tour has already made an agreement with the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino to hold a WPT event there next spring.