THE CAPITOL

Skill games company woos Pa. lawmakers with trips to wild Wyoming rodeo

by Angela Couloumbis of Spotlight PA | Sept. 19, 2022

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HARRISBURG — “It’s the sounds, the lights, the competition or the experience of a lifetime. ... Everyone comes for a different reason but leaves a modern cowboy.” ... So goes the motto for Cheyenne Frontier Days, the premier summer festival in Wyoming that bills itself as the world’s largest outdoor rodeo and Western celebration, complete with concerts, carnivals, parades, cook-offs, an air show, and even professional bull-riding contests.

This past summer, a select group of Pennsylvania legislators, including House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff (R., Centre), got to experience the extravaganza for themselves courtesy of Pace-O-Matic. ... The Georgia-based company makes skill games, slot-like machines that currently generate millions in revenue and, in Pennsylvania, operate in a legal and regulatory gray area — one the legislature will play a key role in defining.

For some of the lawmakers, it was an all-expenses-paid experience, information from the company indicates. ... The trip to Wyoming is the latest example of a largely behind-the-scenes war of cash and influence between skill game operators like Pace-O-Matic and casino owners and other powerful gambling interests in the state.

On one side, skill game companies want their machines to be formally recognized as legal. On the other side stand the casinos and other gambling companies that have complained for years that the state’s gambling landscape is oversaturated — and that further competition will cannibalize the existing market.

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