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The Hollywood Casino in Kansas City, Kan., changed the area’s gambling market when it opened in February, the first big new casino in the area in 15 years.

But in a market known for its resilience and stability, Hollywood and its four competitors in Missouri have settled into a steady competition. Results from the second half of 2012 were similar to the year’s first half after Hollywood’s big first month.

Some highlights:

• Hollywood pulled in just under $114 million in revenue in 11 months, 16.2 percent of the market. That’s hardly the $175 million or more in annual revenue that a couple of studies once predicted, but those forecasts assumed a stronger economy and a larger Kansas casino.

“Things have gone very well,” Bob Sheldon, the casino’s general manager, said last week. “The Kansas City market is very competitive.… We grew the market.”

• The four Missouri area casinos — the Argosy, Harrah’s, Ameristar and Isle of Capri — lost nearly $65.47 million in revenue versus their 2011 results for the 11 months Hollywood has been open. But add in Hollywood’s revenue and the area market was up by $48.5 million, 7.4 percent, for those months.

“New properties don’t expand markets the way they would” back in the early 1990s, said John Kempf, managing director of RBC Capital Markets, who follows gambling companies including the owners of all the area casinos.

Hollywood’s less-than-predicted splash also meant the Missouri casinos lost less than expected. A Missouri Gaming Commission study had expected the four area casinos’ annual revenue to drop to $632 million in 2012 when the Hollywood opened, and they actually brought in $646 million.

• The area’s casino employment rolls grew by roughly 325 jobs. The four Missouri casinos had shed about 430 jobs total at midyear 2012, according to the Missouri Gaming Commission’s annual report. But the Hollywood has added 755 to the mix.

• Hollywood hit the Argosy the hardest. Its revenue was off 21.3 percent since the Hollywood opened, compared with the same months in 2011, and 19.1 percent for the whole year. But officials at the Riverside casino say that’s what they expected, in part because the Argosy is the closest geographically to the Kansas casino.

In addition, the Argosy’s parent company, Penn National Gaming, owns the Hollywood in a partnership with International Speedway Corp., so patrons can use their reward points — something like frequent flier miles for gamblers — at both casinos.

•  Harrah’s held up better than the area’s other big player, the Ameristar. Harrah’s lost 4.5 percent of revenue while the Hollywood was open, versus 7.5 percent for the Ameristar. But Ameristar, the market leader in revenue, kept that distinction. The area’s smallest casino, Isle of Capri, slipped less than 3.3 percent once the Hollywood opened, but its losses accelerated in the second half of the year.

One part of the market that’s difficult to pin down is the 7th Street Casino in downtown Kansas City, Kan. It’s basically a slot parlor with around 600 machines, and it doesn’t have to release results because it is tribally run.

Here’s more on what’s up at each of the other casinos.

Hollywood

Kempf, the gambling analyst, said the typical script for a new casino was a big opening month or two and then a fallback, as many gamblers who tried it returned to their previous “home” casinos, at least most of the time.

Hollywood followed that script. So although its entrance and first half of the year didn’t produce as much business as some had hoped, it gradually gained market share in the second half of the year.

Hollywood’s December revenue was its best since its first two months, and it took nearly 17.2 percent of the market in December, its best share since February’s opening surge.

The casino business is seasonal, and one month’s results shouldn’t get too much emphasis. But because December is often a down month with people busy for the holidays, Hollywood’s big December was a nice surprise, Sheldon said.

Sheldon likes Hollywood’s chances to keep growing, too. Besides having a new facility and the only big casino on the Kansas side of the state line, Hollywood is on the second turn of the Kansas Speedway, and close to the Legends shopping area, the T-Bones’ baseball stadium, and Sporting Kansas City soccer and its new stadium.

“The success of Sporting Kansas City — the team’s winning, and its attendance and fan base — has helped,” Sheldon said. “We’ve had some nice cross visitation.”

The casino also improved its results as it learned how to handle big race days at Kansas Speedway, Sheldon said. For its first NASCAR race, in April, Sheldon said the casino didn’t draw as much business as it could from the racing fans, and saw its regular business drop as some customers stayed home to avoid the racing crowd.

But for the next NASCAR event, in October, he said, the casino’s marketing attracted more NASCAR business and held onto regular traffic after “our patrons learned that they could still get in and out” on a race day.

Sheldon also noted that the Speedway had completed a new road course and was adding a Grand-Am race in August, giving the Hollywood a third big race to play off of.

Sheldon said the casino would continue to focus on marketing to get people to return, and to draw more business from Johnson County.

“Our challenge is to grow repeat business,” Sheldon said, “and we’ve had steady growth of our market share.… We expect 2013 to be more of the same.”

The Argosy

Hollywood’s sister casino has given up the most business, but the Argosy’s general manager, John Chaszar, says he’s “happy with the market. Hollywood did grow the market slightly.”

Argosy’s year-over-year revenue losses have been more than 20 percent most months, which Chaszar would like to see “come back down a little.” But for the most part things have gone as expected, he said.

“We stuck with our strategy,” he said, which included joint marketing with Hollywood. The first thing one sees on Argosy’s website, in fact, is that people in the Marquee Rewards program “earn points whenever you play at both Argosy Casino Hotel & Spa and Hollywood Casino at Kansas Speedway.”

Chaszar described the market’s re-ordering to Hollywood’s entry as “rational,” and said the Argosy had anticipated the way things unfolded.

Argosy’s “win per patron” — basically how much the casino made, on average, from each gambler to come in — also held fairly steady, indicating it hadn’t lost a disproportionate amount of its biggest players. Its “win per admission” — an admission being a person in for a two-hour gambling “session” — also was steady.

The Argosy also has some advantages in contrast with the Hollywood, such as being closer to the airport, and having its own hotel.

Argosy saw 140 of its employees transfer to the Hollywood to help build its staff, but Chaszar said that had worked out well. Many of those who moved got promotions along with their transfers, he said, and gave Argosy the chance to promote 30 current employees to spots that were vacated, and hire 30 new people.

Isle of Capri

Isle had a solid first half, boosted by January and February results that were much better than those from the blizzard of early 2011. But second-half revenue was off about 7 percent.

Isle still fills a niche that used to take slightly more than 11 percent of the market and appears to be stabilizing at just under that mark. Isle’s the closest to downtown Kansas City and says its size allows it to adapt more quickly to its customers. It’s much smaller than the four other big area casinos.

General manager Todd Snider said part of his casino’s appeal was having the “loosest” penny slots in the Kansas City, Mo., market, meaning Isle pays out a little higher percentage of what gamblers put into those machines.

And Snider said Isle’s rewards program, which it started calling its Fan Club in March, offers more cash back than other casinos’ programs.

The casino updated 15 percent of its slot-machine floor in 2012, and Snider said Isle’s smaller size gave him the time to talk with dealers and slot technicians, along with customers.

“We’re always striving to improve, whether that’s our entertainment, bricks and mortar, or service,” Snider said.

Ameristar

Ameristar also felt Hollywood’s effects but had no trouble remaining the area’s top-revenue casino.

“It’s business as usual,” said general manager Sean Barnard. “We love being the market leader.”

The casino has had “great success” for 2½ years with its program to bring in some new slot machines every 90 days, Barnard said. The new machines are grouped and highlighted, as are the slots that have been the most popular.

Barnard said Ameristar had stepped up its customer service even more, becoming “fanatical” about it with a new competitor in the market. For instance, Ameristar always responds to customer comments within 48 hours, but he said the turnaround time had been even better lately.

Ameristar’s restaurant operations have provided another boost in recent months, he said, with the addition of executive chef Georg Paulussen and pasty chef John Lacroix.

The big news for Ameristar came at the end of the year when it was announced that smaller rival Pinnacle Gaming was buying Ameristar for $869 million. Besides its Kansas City casino, Ameristar has seven casinos in 11 states. Pinnacle has seven casinos in three states and a racetrack in Ohio.

The deal needs regulatory approval in various states but is expected to go through, perhaps in the third quarter. It’s possible that the combined company will be asked to sell one of its casinos in the St. Louis area, where Ameristar has the casino in neighboring St. Charles, and Pinnacle owns Lumiere Place and the River City Casino.

Pinnacle isn’t saying what it might do with its new properties, though it could upgrade the Kansas City casino or just stick with its winning hand for a while.

Harrah’s

General manager Tom Cook said Harrah’s had hoped the addition of Hollywood would expand the market more than it did, and the 7.4 percent rise “was definitely on the lower side of what we might have hoped for.”

“We held our own,” Cook said, and lost “less than we thought we would, and less than Argosy and Ameristar. That speaks well for our strategy and our staff.”

Cook said the strategy wasn’t new and rested on marketing to persuade its best customers to stay loyal. He said Harrah’s executed the strategy well, evidenced by the best scores it had ever received on customer comment forms.

The casino’s “win per patron,” which can indicate of how many big players a casino draws, also held up well. In fact, Harrah’s typically has the second-best win per patron among the area’s Missouri casinos, and edged ahead of the usual leader, the Argosy, three of the last six months. Harrah’s consistently led the market in “win per admission.”

Though the market appears to be settling into a new normal, Cook said things could change again soon — unusual for a market that was stable for so long.

“We had a call to action with Hollwood’s opening,” he said, “and it remains to be seen what Pinnacle will do,” assuming its acquisition of Ameristar goes through.

“I like our chances.”