According to Penn Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden, Election Day was good for his company and the gaming industry in general.
“Tuesday night was a good day and a good night for the sector in in a lot of ways,” Snowden said during Thursday’s earnings call. “It was certainly a really good day and night for Penn specifically.”
The hope is that the new wave of Democratic legislators will be more amenable to gaming proposals long championed by the industry. In Texas, where Penn owns two racetracks, Retama Park (near San Antonio) and Sam Houston, Snowden noted that Penn has been “operating in the gaming space through horse racing” for a while.
“We’ve got two great assets there and we’re ready to play offense,” Snowden said. “It’s not a defensive play for us. We also think we’re positioned well, in that we have great relationships with the movers and shakers in Texas. We’re not going to get into names and entities, but we’ve got very strong aligned relationships there and we have a great lobbying team, I think one of the best across the country, so we feel really good about the opportunity.”
Snowden added that retail gaming expansion, potentially in Georgia, could happen, given the changes there, and that opposition to gaming in other states could be overcome. Snowden also noted that many legislators who were proponents of skill-based games were defeated.
“Looking at some of the states we’ve talked about from a skill-based gaming perspective, Tuesday was a great day,” Snowden said. “Most of the pro skill-based game advocates at the state-lawmaker level either lost outright or lost a lot of influence and power in those elections in those two states, and that’s good for the industry.”
Snowden said it’s particularly good for Penn in two states: Pennsylvania, where the operator has two properties, and Missouri, where Penn has three casinos.
He noted that in Missouri, where Catherine Hanaway is attorney general – “a rock star,” Snowden called her – “the state has been producing very strong revenue numbers on a year-over-year basis in 2026. I don’t think that’s by coincidence.”
In Pennsylvania, where the state’s Supreme Court declared that all skill games must be shuttered by October 14 of this year, the month proved to be “the strongest year-over-year gaming revenue growth that we’ve seen in Pennsylvania in all of 2026.
“I don’t know if that continues into future months. I don’t know how long it lasts,” Snowden says. “We’ll see what happens legislatively, but I do know that (Election Day) was a very good day overall for the industry and certainly for Penn.
Penn Entertainment revenue reached $1.5 billion for the third quarter 0f 2026. Adjusted EBITDAR was $501.8 million and segment Adjusted EBITDAR margins were 33.7%.
After Penn’s numbers were released Thursday morning, analysts were confident about the operator’s results.
“The better-than-consensus results in most segments, coupled with the indications of a further development project, are positive, although with the shares up 13.2% the past week, we believe the upside in shares in response could be modest,” wrote Jeffries’s David Katz.
“We rarely talk about year-over-year growth regarding regional metrics, but it’s apropos here, as Penn is seeing a strong return from recent investments,” wrote J. P Morgan’s Daniel Politzer in a note. “Penn’s land-based revenues were plus 5% year-over-year (+1% excluding recent projects), while Adjusted EBITDAR was plus 8% year-over-year (+5% excluding recent projects); margins were +80 basis points year-over-year.”
