Puerto Rico’s gaming and betting industry brought in $186 million in revenue in 2023, said Puerto Rico Gaming Commission Interim Director Juan Santaella.
The island’s casino sector was responsible for the vast majority of that sum, taking $177.3 million.
Puerto Rico has a long history as a casino-first gaming industry, having been the second U.S. jurisdiction to allow casinos way back in 1948. Still, Puerto Ricans place most of their bets online, just like on the U.S. mainland. Santaella said that in Casino Metro and Casino del Mar, it’s about an 80-20 split between online wagering and in-person betting.
“We invest to continue bringing tourists because in Puerto Rico, there is a local boom in casinos from gaming and because they have also become an entertainment center, where they not only have machines but also artistic events and other types of things,” said Santaella at the Ibero-American Gaming Summit in San Juan last month. “It is no less important that it is an industry that benefits from tourists who come to spend their money and enjoy Puerto Rico.”
To that end, a proportion of Puerto Rico’s gaming proceeds go to the government for the development and investment of Puerto Rico as a tourism destination.
Meanwhile, sports betting took a little over half a million dollars, while horse racing posted revenues of $8.7 million. Puerto Rico’s legislature approved sports betting in 2019 but the market didn’t open up until early 2022 and online sports betting didn’t arrive until last year.
Santaella said that Puerto Rico currently has six licensed online sports betting operators, but only two currently receive bets: BetMGM in partnership with Casino del Mar and Caesars in partnership with Casino Metro.
Puerto Rico can be gateway between LatAm and U.S. markets
Santaella’s predecessor, Jaime Rivera Emmanuelli, who left his role at the Commission earlier this year, said that Puerto Rico has the potential to stand up well against other U.S. regulated gaming markets.
“I believe that Puerto Rico, in many verticals, is a jurisdiction with a lot of experience. In terms of the new verticals, such as sports betting, fantasy games and others, we are at a moment that can be compared with most of the jurisdictions in the U.S., with the exception of Nevada,” said Rivera Emmanuelli.
“I believe that Puerto Rico can be said to be on par in comparison with the jurisdictions of the different states. In some, we will be ahead and in others, we will be a little behind.”
Rivera Emmanuelli also suggested that Puerto Rico’s geographical location and dual-language population serve it well as a gateway jurisdiction for Latin American gaming companies looking to expand into the U.S. market.
“A company coming from Ibero-America that manages to enter Puerto Rico and operate in Puerto Rico can later expand its operation and the process of entering other markets within the United States becomes easier,” he said. “In the same way, for U.S. companies that want to test their products in a largely Hispanic market, Puerto Rico is the ideal place to do it because Puerto Rico’s regulatory and legal framework is quite similar to that of the different states.
“In other words, they would be operating in a place where they already have an idea of the rules of the game, but where they could see how their products are doing in a mostly Hispanic market.”
