Jay Snowden
Chief Executive Officer and President at PENN Entertainment
Thanks, Joe. Good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be here in Wyomissing with our CFO, Felicia Hendrix; Head of Operations, Todd George; and our CTO, Aaron LaBerge as well as other members of our senior management team. It was great to see many of you at our investor event on October 7 at the M Resort in Las Vegas. Some of you may have missed it. We highlighted some of the significant product enhancements we recently implemented for ESPN BET as well as some early KPIs related to those feature upgrades. We also provided a hands on demonstration of our industry leading three C's technology and attendees got to see some of our new property automations in action along with several key three business updates that we will review or highlight again with all of you here today.
Turning to the results of the third quarter, strong year-over-year market share growth in Ohio, Massachusetts and Kansas helped offset unfavorable hold in our Northeast segment and volume declines in our South segment largely as a result of severe weather disruptions and our accelerated hotel remodeling at L'Auberge Casino in Lake Charles. We are roughly halfway through the planned room renovations there which have been driving higher gaming spend per customer. We look forward to completing this project by the end of January 2025. Meanwhile, we are continuing to mitigate pressure from no new supply in Nebraska, Louisiana and Chicago land through our ongoing efforts to reimagine our properties to improve the customer experience and drive loyalty.
Overall, we are seeing stable consumer demand and are performing well in those markets not impacted by new competition profitably gaining market share in several of them. Thanks to our best-in-class operators across the country. We saw sequential month-over-month improvement throughout the third quarter and continuing into the month of October. The first several days of November showed improved volumes as well with a strong first weekend.
Finally as noted on slide four, we have seen 3.6% year-over-year slot volume growth through the first five full weeks in Q4 compared to flat year-over-year slot volumes in the third quarter led by our properties in Michigan, Ohio and ST Louis. The trends we are seeing around the country provide us with continued optimism about our four new growth projects which are highlighted on slide five. These projects remain on budget and on schedule with Hollywood Joliet expected to open ahead of schedule during the second half of 2025.
Turning to slide six. We unveiled seven new ESPN BET branded retail sportsbooks during the quarter as we continue to implement our rebranding strategy across our portfolio. On the interactive side, as I referenced earlier, prior to the start of football season, we released several product enhancements and ESPN integrations to our ESPN BET offering. These product improvements help contribute to a higher parlay mix and higher structural hold during the quarter.
Slide seven highlights the meaningful growth ESPN Bet has generated for both our digital database and active user base providing a strong foundation for future growth as we introduce additional product improvements. We are now approaching four million members in our digital database. And we saw a 127% year-over-year growth in monthly active users in Q3 2024 versus Q3 2023.
As noted on Slide nine, our Interactive segment saw year-over-year OSB NGR growth of more than 200% in Q3, driven by a combination of higher parlay mix from our improving products and lower promotional expenses. While we saw an increase in promotional spend at the beginning of football season from the competition, we have remained disciplined as we primarily focus on reactivation and retention efforts given our deep digital database.
As noted on Slide 11, we have seen momentum from September into October and we are seeing encouraging trends in volumes and handle per user. The September launch of ESPN BET in New York expanded our online betting footprint to 19 U.S. states, representing approximately 46% of the U.S. population. Average daily handle per user in New York is 228% higher than the average in our existing states. And our average deposits there are over 87% larger. And with over 10 million average monthly visitors on ESPN, New York provides a significantly greater scale as we leverage ESPN's vast media reach and integrations for efficient customer acquisition.
Turning to Slide 13, as of October 30th, account linking between ESPN BET and ESPN is now available for customers. By linking accounts, fans now have the ability to seamlessly track upcoming, live, and settled bets within the ESPN app and on espn.com. Bringing this new feature to market is an important step towards creating an industry leading personalized sports betting experience across the ESPN ecosystem. This will help to further drive monetization through enhanced engagement, retention, and reactivation. This was a tremendous achievement for the talented PENN and ESPN technology teams and really speaks to the depth of our partnership with ESPN.
We have some exciting additional product enhancements coming soon as we accelerate our product roadmap. These include an improved same game parley experience, enhanced branding and IP, and upgraded in play betting. Finally, on the iCasino side, as you'll see on Slide 15, Hollywood Casino experienced solid growth in the quarter as well. That momentum has continued into October and will be helped by our recently introduced PENN Play promo credit redemption offering. We're excited for the launch of our Hollywood Casino app in Pennsylvania in early Q1 subject to final regulatory approvals, of course, with additional jurisdictions to follow.
I'll now turn it over to Felicia for additional financial details for the quarter.