Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley Review: The Austintown Racino

Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley is a racino in Youngstown, Mahoning County. Its gaming floor opened in 2014. Its licence covers video lottery terminals and nothing dealt, so no table here is run by a person.

The venue holds an Ohio Lottery Commission video lottery terminal licence. Everything a visitor can play on this floor follows from which of the state’s two licences the building holds.

The Racino at Austintown

Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley is a racino on North Canfield Niles Road, in the Austintown area west of Youngstown. Searches for the venue turn up under both names, which is worth knowing before trying to navigate to it.

The licence is a video lottery terminal licence from the Ohio Lottery Commission. That permits VLTs and electronic table games and rules out a dealt table. Mahoning County has no commercial casino, so the nearest dealt tables are a substantial drive west.

Racing and Hours

The racing here is thoroughbred, not harness, which sets it apart from most of the Ohio racinos, and it keeps a calendar of its own. The gaming floor opened in 2014, which places it among the last of the Ohio racinos to come online.

Isolation Is the Defining Feature

This is the eastern edge of the state’s gaming map, closer to Pittsburgh than to Cleveland in driving terms for parts of its catchment. That isolation, rather than the floor itself, is what mostly determines who turns up.

Operator, Landlord and Floor Figures

PENN Entertainment operates the venue and Gaming and Leisure Properties is named in older listings as the property owner, which is a landlord role, not an operating one. The gaming-floor figure comes from the operator’s published material.

The minimum age is 21, and the Ohio Problem Gambling Helpline is available at all hours on 1-800-589-9966.

Three Names, One Building

This venue is unusually hard to search for, and the reason is that three different names all point at it. The signage says Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley. The facility sits in Austintown, so it is widely searched as Hollywood Casino Austintown. And its postal address reads Youngstown, because that is the mailing city for the area.

None of the three is wrong, which is why all three persist. Anyone navigating should use the street address rather than a name, since a map search for one variant may not surface the same result as a search for another. The word “casino” in the commonly used form is also misleading here: the licence is a video lottery terminal licence, so there is no dealt table whatever the name suggests.

100,000 Square Feet, the Same as Two Casinos

The Mahoning Valley gaming floor covers 100,000 square feet. That is the same area as JACK Cleveland Casino and Hard Rock Casino Cincinnati, both of which may deal live table games and this venue may not.

It is the clearest illustration on this site that floor size tells a visitor nothing about the games. Three venues, one area, two licence classes, different floors entirely.

The Easternmost Venue on the Ohio Map

Mahoning Valley is the last gaming floor before the Pennsylvania line, and for part of its catchment Pittsburgh is the closer city. That matters because Pennsylvania licenses full commercial casinos, so a driver weighing this floor against one across the state line is comparing two different licence regimes and not two similar venues.

Within Ohio the nearest dealt table is JACK Cleveland Casino, an hour or more west depending on where the trip starts. Mahoning County itself holds no commercial casino licence and no second gaming venue of any class.

The racing here is thoroughbred, which is unusual among the Ohio racinos: four of the seven run harness meetings instead. The track and the gaming floor keep separate calendars and separate hours.