Las Vegas-based Boyd Gaming Corp. Wednesday said it was acquiring the Valley Forge Casino Resort in King of Prussia, Pa. for $280.5 million. The property is located 20 miles west of downtown Philadelphia.
Valley Forge will be Boyd Gaming’s first casino property in Pennsylvania, the second-largest commercial gaming state in the nation.
Earlier this week, Boyd said it was buying four casinos currently operated by Pinnacle Entertainment for $575 million. Pinnacle is being acquired by Penn National Gaming in a $2.8 billion transaction. Boyd is purchasing casinos in Indiana, Ohio and Missouri.
The purchase of Valley Forge gives Boyd access to four major regional gaming markets — Philadelphia, St. Louis, Kansas City and Cincinnati. In a statement, the company said the markets have a combined population of 10 million adults.
“We will expand our nationwide presence, operating 29 properties across 10 states,” said Boyd Gaming CEO Keith Smith. “We believe this expansion will help drive additional growth throughout our nationwide portfolio, as we market our destination properties to these new customers in the Midwest and Northeast.”
The Valley Forge resort has nearly 500 hotel rooms, eight restaurants and bars and a 40,000-square-foot casino with 600 slot machines and 50 table games. It has more than 100,000 square feet of meeting, convention and exhibit space.
The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2018.
Smith said the passage of Pennsylvania’s gaming expansion legislation in the fall created “new opportunities to drive incremental growth at Valley Forge through the expansion of the property’s slot capacity and the introduction of new forms of gaming.”
