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On Tuesday, March 11, PENN Entertainment announced the launch of its brand-new standalone casino app in New Jersey. The new standalone mobile app resurrects the Hollywood Casino brand PENN first used for its iGaming product before its ill-fated partnership with Barstool sports. Since breaking up with Barstool, PENN uses ESPN Bet for its sports betting product and has gone back to Hollywood for its casino.
With this New Jersey launch, the Hollywood Casino app is now available in three states. Michigan and Pennsylvania are the other two.
PENN Entertainment Chief Technology Officer Adam LeBerge spoke about how excited the company is to have its own dedicated mobile app for online casino gaming in a statement.
“We’re thrilled to introduce our dedicated, casino-first experience to customers across New Jersey. Hollywood Casino delivers a best-in-class experience with an extensive game library, seamless gameplay, and exclusive content from our in-house studio.”
Now, PENN Entertainment has its full catalog of online casino games available under an app with its own name on it which should prove to be a nice boost to the bottom line. Even better is that existing customers can use their ESPN BET information to access the newly improved Hollywood Casino app.
Hollywood Casino is back as a standalone app
This new Hollywood Casino standalone app was not created simply to better organize the gaming catalog, but instead to try and optimize the mobile app to attract new players and generate more revenue.
When PENN Entertainment Chief Executive Officer Jay Snowden spoke on during the Q4 earnings call, he said exactly that.
“We were laser focused on speed and [ interface/ experience] and it shows. Optimizations like this are only possible because we own our technology stack.”
In Pennsylvania, PENN Entertainment has seen a big increase across many stats after improving its mobile app. There was a 16% boost in average weekly s, 38% boost in gross gaming revenue and a 35% increase in net gaming revenue. The Hollywood Casino app also jumped from ninth to second on the Eilers & Krejcik Gaming rankings.
Now, LeBerge is hoping PENN Entertainment will see a similar boost in New Jersey as well
“This launch builds on the strong momentum we’ve gained since introducing our enhanced standalone app in December.”
The standalone casino app trend
This is not necessarily a new or inventive idea by PENN Entertainment. Many other casino operators have separate standalone casino brands as well.
For example, Caesars operates Caesars Sportsbook & Casino as a hybrid app, and Golden Nugget Online Casino.
For PENN Entertianment, this move to a standalone mobile app under the name Hollywood Casino is all about cleaning up the confusion and creating a better funnel from casino to mobile app and mobile app to caisno.
Snowden feels this new standalone app will benefit Hollywood Casino and PENN Entertainment immensely.
“What we’re doing right now is messy, because you’re marketing to your land-based casino database at Hollywood properties, and telling them that they should the ESPN bet app to play their favorite slot machine.
“We’ve watched our competition launch standalone iCasino apps with great success and many times it was the same brand.
“It’s not only leading with iCasino in that app, but it’s also the brand connection which is going to be, I think, will be pretty powerful for us.”
