CHESTER - MTR Gaming, parent of Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack and Resort, reported a loss of $8.2 million Friday for the third quarter but noted revenues were up by 13 percent over the same period in 2007.

Net revenue stood for the three months ended Sept. 30 at $131.4 million, up from $116 million in the 2007 third quarter.

The figures came in the last conference call to be led by Ted Arneault, MTR's departing chief executive, who will be replaced Monday by Robert Griffin, a gaming industry veteran. Arneault has run the company for 13 years and will be earning $512,000 a year as a consultant to the company.

Arneault noted Mountaineer Racetrack had 300 employees when he took over and now has more than 4,000.

"It is being left in good hands with Bob and David (Hughes, the chief financial officer) and John (Bittner, the executive vice president of finance and accounting) and the management team. There is still a lot of fine tuning to be done that these guys are experts in," Arneault said during the investor conference call Friday morning.

Hughes discussed MTR's shift away from being a development company into an operating company that isn't building more facilities.

He said the shift will allow the company to focus on cutting corporate overhead as well as fine tuning its marketing efforts.

"For the first time, our company is going to be taking our marketing dollars and looking at how we spend them," Hughes said. "We may be looking at spending less and getting more to our customers."

He said MTR is in a unique position as a regional company and is not as focused as it had been the past couple of years on marketing efforts aimed toward legislation in Pennsylvania to permit slot machines and in West Virginia to permit table gambling.

Arneault and Griffin said MTR will be looking to trim corporate expenses by at least $2 million.

Asked about his views on the gaming referendum in Ohio, state Issue 6, which would permit a casino near Cincinnati, Arneault said Mountaineer can't lose, no matter which way the referendum goes Tuesday.

"If it failed 48 to 49 percent to 51 or 52, even though the initiative would fail, it would give an indication that people in Ohio are more inclined to look at a gaming bill that is structured in a way that would really include a lot more geographic area in Ohio," he said. "There's really almost no way Mountaineer or Erie (home of MTR's Presque Isle Downs) can truly lose on that, and from the subsidiary of MTR perspective, because of our property at Scioto Downs (at Columbus)."