MGM Northfield Park Review: What the Summit County Racino Permits

MGM Northfield Park sits in Northfield, between Cleveland and Akron, and it is a racino. The distinction decides the floor.

MGM Northfield Park Is a Racino

MGM Northfield Park holds a video lottery terminal licence from the Ohio Lottery Commission, not a casino licence. That permits VLTs and electronic table games and rules out a dealt table. Anyone searching for an MGM casino in Ohio expecting live blackjack is looking at the wrong licence class; the nearest dealt tables are at JACK Cleveland Casino.

Fixed Facts and Moving Ones: A Review Caveat

An MGM Northfield Park review is more useful when it splits the fixed from the changeable. The licence and the games it permits are fixed. Floor size, dining and the event calendar are not.

Ownership is the detail most listings mangle, because the real estate and the operating business are not the same party. MGM Resorts International runs the gaming business. The property is owned by VICI Properties, which absorbed MGM Growth Properties in 2022, so any listing still naming MGM Growth as the owner is describing a company that no longer exists. Both are recorded above, separately.

Inside the Gaming Floor

The floor is video lottery terminals plus electronic table games, the standard racino arrangement. Results on those electronic tables come from the machine. There is no pit and no dealer.

An MGM Northfield Park review that lists “table games” without that qualifier will send somebody across Cuyahoga County for the wrong thing. The MGM Northfield Park racino licence is the constraint, not the operator’s ambition.

Harness Racing at Northfield

Harness racing is the older half of the site and predates the gaming floor by decades. The calendar runs independently, and race nights are not gaming hours. Summit County has no second gaming venue.

This matters more here than at some venues, because Northfield sits close enough to both Cleveland and Akron that people arrive for one thing and discover the other.

The Ownership Question

Older sources name MGM Growth Properties as the owner. VICI Properties absorbed that company in 2022, and the entity holding the real estate was never the entity running the gaming business in any case. Published listings tend to print one and imply both.

This page prints them as two separate fields, operator and property owner, because that is what they are. A single “owner” line for a racino is almost always wrong about one of the two.

Which Way to Drive for a Dealt Table

Northfield is in Summit County, which has no second gaming venue, roughly between Cleveland and Akron on the corridor that links them. For a dealt table the nearest option is JACK Cleveland Casino, and JACK Thistledown Racino is closer still but is another racino, so it offers no pit either.

Northeast Ohio has the densest cluster of venues in the state, and three of the four nearest to Northfield are racinos. That is the practical shape of the market here.

Figures and Age

Gaming-floor figures come from the operator’s published material and move with the floor plan. The minimum age is 21, and the Ohio Problem Gambling Helpline is reachable at all hours on 1-800-589-9966.

One More Thing Worth Checking Before You Go

Floor reconfigurations here have been frequent enough that a floor plan found online may not match the room. Check the venue’s own page for current hours, not a third-party listing, this one included.

How 200,000 Square Feet Compares

At 200,000 square feet, Northfield Park has the largest gaming floor of the ten Ohio venues that publish one. It is also a racino, which is the useful part of that fact: floor size and licence class have nothing to do with each other here. The four commercial casinos, the only venues allowed to deal a table, all sit between 100,000 and 160,000 square feet.

Square footage is not the same measure as machine count, and the two are published inconsistently across the state. Area covers the whole gaming space including circulation; a machine count covers only the terminals. A visitor comparing venues should read the figures above for what each one actually measures.