Inside America’s Casinos: Stop #13 – Rivers Casino Philadelphia

Join CDC Gaming as we embark upon a road trip Inside America’s Casinos. For our 13th stop, we visit Rivers Casino Philadelphia.

After a few days spent visiting Atlantic City’s contained Marina District and its Boardwalk’s dense casino ecosystem, it was time to move to the next destination in my East Coast casino journey: Philadelphia.

The distance is just over 60 miles, which took me about an hour to drive. But the difference between the two casino environments is much greater than the physical distance might suggest. While Atlantic City is built around casinos, Philadelphia is a city that has some casinos in its outskirts but is by no means a casino destination.

Having lived and studied for years in Pittsburgh, on the other side of Pennsylvania, I used to spend a lot of time in Philadelphia with family and friends. Here in Philly, casinos are just a small part of a much larger urban machine. The city is driven by history, sports, universities, tourism, and neighborhoods that each have a special heritage, culture, and identity. So I was  curious to see how a casino sits among all these moving parts.

And what better place to start this leg of the journey than Rivers Casino, which does a great job absorbing so much of Pennsylvania’s past and present.

The property opened in 2010 following the passage of the Pennsylvania Race Horse Development and Gaming Act, which allowed the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to issue 17 casino licenses across the state, starting with slot machines, table games following shortly thereafter.

The origins — SugarHouse Casino

The Rivers Casino I used to visit was called SugarHouse Casino, its original name when it opened. Even to this day, locals I’ve spoken to still call it that. The property was built on a 22-acre site on the banks of the Delaware River in Fishtown, a site that was previously home to the Pennsylvania Sugar Refining Company for more than a century and commonly known as the sugar house. In 2019, the name changed to Rivers Casino to align with the branding of its owner, Rush Street Gaming.

Arrival — Homage to industrial heritage

Driving toward Rivers Casino Philadelphia made the approach to Connecticut and Atlantic City casinos seem like I’d done them in a different era, not a few days ago. No long dedicated highway approach is meant to take you to the casino, nor a treelined drive to an isolated resort in the woods.

Instead, I drove through the city grid, going through heavy traffic and busy intersections, and past apartment blocks and industrial buildings, until the property emerged on the waterfront. Rivers Casino sits on Delaware Avenue, with the Delaware River on one side, a small park on the other, and residential and industrial buildings around. The facade and parking entry reflected the mindset that this property aims to be an integral part of the landscape rather than dominate it. I felt that everything about the approach to Rivers Casino was efficient, practical, and straightforward. Nothing theatrical like Caesars, or imposing like the Ocean and Borgata.

First impressions – A modern pocket in a traditional area

The area that has centuries of industrial history and heritage. But the property looks from the outside like a big shopping mall, a flat low structure with cubical shapes and metal cladding. No high towers with reflective glass like the Encore Boston Harbor. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into the casino, but as soon as I entered, I was surprised by how modern it felt.

An efficient clean design

There’s no luxury like Caesars or the Borgata, but everything felt clean, organized, and contemporary. The lighting is bright and the ceilings relatively high. It gave me a feeling of open space, unlike other urban casinos I’ve visited on this trip, which felt cramped and dark.

What stood out most to me was the efficiency of the place. Everything at Rivers Casino felt like it’s optimized for movement, navigation, and usability. I had a clear vision of the property from everywhere I was. There is an easy and clear transition between the gaming floor, sportsbook, and restaurants.

Beyond gaming — Limited resort ambitions

One of the biggest differences between Rivers Casino Philadelphia and the other casinos I’ve visited so far in this trip is the property’s approach to non-gaming facilities. Rivers isn’t trying to become a destination resort. There’s no hotel, let alone a tower with a pool complex or spa. There’s no massive shopping and very limited nightlife and entertainment.

I counted four restaurants, two sports bars, and three fast-food options. There is a live-entertainment venue and conference spaces, but like the casino, they all seem to cater to local people and businesses, to use as part of the surrounding area, not as a stand-alone resort destination.

I’ve stayed at the Rivers Suites, a hotel in a nearby building that used to be a power plant. Branded as part of the casino, it’s a detached property five minutes by foot across a park from the casino. The property is stunning, but it’s not your typical hotel suite in a casino tower. I’ll stay there again for sure.

The gaming floor — Efficient, but not compact

At 100,000 square feet, the gaming floor at is a lot smaller than the mega properties I visited earlier in this trip. But one thing I noticed right away was how efficiently the gaming floor is arranged. The casino has over 1,500 slots, around 75 table games, and a dedicated poker room. The machines are arranged in a neat way, while you can walk around aisles that take you around the property and check out machines and tables. Rows of slot machines against the walls create corridors with less foot traffic, in case you’re looking to play in a bit more of a private setting.

If you’re a high-limit player, there’s an exclusive high-limit area, which isn’t as big (as expected from a smaller-sized casino like this one), but has the full VIP setup, with an exclusive elevator, private bar with dedicated bar staff, and VIP parking.

The BetRivers Sportsbook

One notable feature of this property is its sportsbook. As expected from the Bet Rivers brand, its online casino and sportsbook apps are popular and licensed in many states, giving the brand much broader coverage and exposure beyond its land-based properties in the Northeast.

The BetRivers Sportsbook, a powerful brand in the online scene, also shows its strength in the Rivers land-based properties and the Pennsylvania location is no exception. I was drawn to the sportsbook, as it was one of the first places I noticed when I walked onto the gaming floor. It’s big, warm, and inviting, spans 5,700 square feet, and in addition to a lot of seating and a huge HD video wall and electronic scoreboards also has over 30 self-service betting kiosks.

The crowd — Local, practical, sports-oriented

As noted above, Rivers Casino Philadelphia doesn’t try to offer an inclusive, full-resort, gambling destination. As such, the guests I met were mostly locals and regulars. There were also small groups of friends, but I didn’t see anyone who looked like a tourist. And there wasn’t anything to do there other than gambling, so non-gambling guests were almost nonexistent.

Crowds were mostly younger daytime-sports fans (I saw a lot of Eagles and Flyers jerseys and hats on the gaming floor). I even saw a group of four construction workers playing slots with their hard hats by their side — could there be any better example of a casino attending to locals?

Leaving Rivers Philadelphia

As I walked out of the property, I went around and sat on a bench on the riverbank. I looked across the Delaware River and thought about how different this experience was from the other casinos I’d visited on this trip. This casino doesn’t try to overwhelm guests with scale. It doesn’t try to distract them with spectacle or fantasy. It doesn’t position itself as a self-contained ecosystem.

Instead, Rivers Casino feels practical, modern, efficient, and very urban. It fits naturally into Philadelphia’s daily life, rather than trying to compete with it. It doesn’t try to transport you into a fantasy world, but rather accommodates an efficient straightforward visit of a few hours of gambling.

It felt grounded and proud of its heritage — like Philadelphia itself.