Penn National Gaming CEO Jay Snowden told CNBC on Tuesday that the company is facing a strong recovery in its properties as Covid vaccines make people feel more comfortable returning to casinos.
“What we’re seeing in business now … is revenue and volume that we haven’t seen in years. March was incredible,” Snowden said in an interview with Squawk Box.
Penn National, which joined the S&P 500 this week, has 41 gaming and racing properties in 19 states. After facing the closure of casinos in the early days of coronavirus, Snowden said the reopening in the spring and summer of 2020 proved to be mixed – the presence was low compared to non-pandemic levels, but the commitment of those who ventured was raised.
“We saw a lot of spending per visit when people came, but the visit was still down a lot from year to year because those over 65 were not coming back,” Snowden said.
On Monday night, just over 69% of US residents over the age of 65 received at least one dose of Covid vaccine and 42.5% of that population was fully vaccinated, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 25% of Americans received at least one stroke, including 13.5% of the entire population who were completely vaccinated.
Three vaccines have been approved for emergency use in the United States. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines each require two shots to protect against total immunity. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single dose.
Rising vaccination rates in the U.S. by about 2.5 million photos a day are seen as key to helping the economy continue to escape the pandemic-induced recession, allowing people to resume activities they would otherwise have avoided in the past. health crisis time. Penn National is noticing these effects, Snowden said.
“What we’re seeing now is that visiting expenses were still much higher than before Covid, but the visiting levels in March look a lot like they did in 2019, so you have these two things working together,” he “We had one of the biggest weekends of this last weekend we’ve seen in years.”
However, even with increased Covid immunity protection against vaccinations and high levels of previous infection, the seven-day average of new cases has risen 5% or more in 27 states since Sunday, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Penn National also has a partnership with Barstool Sports to offer the Barstool Sportsbook app, enabling online betting in three states so far – Pennsylvania, Michigan and, most recently, Illinois – in hopes of launching in several states this year. .
Through the Barstool Sportsbook, Snowden said there was a lot of interest in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, known as March Madness, which saw a lot of parenthesis upsets in the first rounds.
“All the bets that took place at the Super Bowl, we almost exceeded that amount in Pennsylvania and Michigan … on the first day of March Madness,” Snowden said. “We went over, almost doubled, what we saw for the Super Bowl in the first two days of Mart Madness.”