Philadelphia's Mayor Just Called Skill Games "Predatory." Here's Why That Matters More Than the Bill Count.
United Gaming Advisors — September 11, 2026. Chris Schink is also the founder of Monte Cristo Gaming, Illinois's premium video gaming terminal operator.
Key Takeaways for Gaming Operators and Advisors
Diamond's package took its first real procedural step. A formal co-sponsorship memo is now circulating in Harrisburg — the mechanism that actually produces a bill number, not just another announcement.
The terms are fully specified. 20% tax on gross terminal revenue, a five-machine cap for clubs/bars/truck stops, casino and online tax cut to 49.9%, and a detailed split: 79% property tax relief, 13.25% General Fund, 6.75% Race Horse Development Trust Fund, 1% problem gambling treatment.
The scale of the deadline just got concrete. Reporting now puts the statewide machine count at roughly 70,000 — that's the size of the removal-and-seizure problem if October 13 arrives with no bill signed.
State Police restated the compliance bar. Powering a machine down is not enough; it has to physically leave the premises through the distributor or vendor.
Philadelphia's mayor is on the record. Cherelle Parker called the machines "predatory" and said flatly they shouldn't be in the city's neighborhoods — a political signal that the state's largest city isn't pushing for a legislative rescue.
32 days to October 13. A co-sponsorship memo is progress. It is not a bill with a number, and the calendar isn't waiting for one.
Two things happened in Pennsylvania's skill-games standoff this week, and it's worth separating them, because they point in slightly different directions.
The first is procedural, and it's genuinely new. Rep. Russ Diamond's package — the one this space has tracked since it was announced by news release three weeks ago — took its first concrete step toward becoming an actual bill. Diamond circulated a formal co-sponsorship memo and is now recruiting other legislators to sign on. That's a meaningfully different thing than a press release. A co-sponsorship memo is the document that precedes bill introduction; it's how a sponsor demonstrates enough support to justify a bill number and a committee referral. The terms in it are now fully specified rather than described in outline: 20% tax on gross terminal revenue, up to five machines per location at clubs, liquor-licensed bars and restaurants, and qualified truck stops, a companion cut in the casino and online gaming tax rate from 55% down to 49.9%, and a revenue-distribution formula that sends the bulk of the money — 79% — to property tax relief, with smaller shares to the General Fund, the Race Horse Development Trust Fund, and problem gambling treatment.
That's real movement. It's also, twenty days into a thirty-two-day countdown, still a memo seeking signatures rather than a bill with a number attached to it. The distance between "co-sponsorship memo" and "signed law" is not small, and it typically isn't fast.
The second development is about scale and politics, and it argues for less patience, not more. Reporting this week put a number on something that's mostly been discussed in the abstract: roughly 70,000 skill game machines are operating across Pennsylvania right now. That's the size of what October 14 actually looks like if nothing changes — not a handful of high-profile removals, but a statewide operation touching corner stores, taverns, gas stations, social clubs, and restaurants in every county. State Police used their latest guidance to close off the obvious workaround, too: "simply unplugging or powering down a device will not satisfy the requirement." The machines have to physically leave, arranged through the distributor or vendor — a business that deactivates in place and hopes for the best is not in compliance.
And then there's Philadelphia. Mayor Cherelle Parker didn't hedge: she called the machines "predatory" and said, "In no way, shape or form do I think these slot machines should be in our neighborhoods." That's the mayor of the state's largest city, on the record, arguing for removal rather than for a legislative rescue. If you're advising an operator whose business case depends on Harrisburg finding a compromise before October 13, that's a data point worth weighing seriously — the political pressure isn't uniformly pushing toward accommodation, and it's not coming only from the Governor's office.
Put the two developments together and the picture is this: the legislative path got a little more real this week, and the cost of that path not finishing in time got a lot more concrete. Thirty-two days is enough time for a co-sponsorship memo to become a bill, a bill to get a committee vote, and a bill to reach the Governor's desk — Harrisburg has done faster things under real deadline pressure before. It is not a lot of time, and it's less time than it was yesterday. Any operator in Pennsylvania who hasn't already had the physical-removal conversation with their distributor should be having it now, independent of how the Diamond package's odds look on any given day. The DA-level enforcement warnings this brief covered earlier this week made the point already: the law may change, but a machine that's been forfeited isn't coming back if it does.
