California Tribal Gaming Now Even More Competitive with Northern Nevada Casinos

This blog has discussed the threat to Reno and Tahoe casinos from California-based tribal gaming properties. The key advantage of the tribal casinos is that the tribal properties are much closer to the California population centers than Reno and Lake Tahoe. The New York Times has an article that highlights the proximity advantage as well as the upgrading of the tribal facilities to become more full-amenity hotel casinos.

I've posted a similar sentiment to the Times article a few months back. That post can be found here. The most controversial post on this blog regarding the topic can be found here. Specifically what do Reno and Lake Tahoe do to combat full-amenity tribal hotel casinos that are located much closer to California cities? In the last referenced post, I discussed that Nevada casinos may need to exploit the two things they can offer that California casinos can't - sports betting and legal brothels. Sports betting probably won't generate the level of revenue to make up for lost slot revenue, but legal brothels may be enough of a differentiator to pull sufficient traffic to the Reno and Lake Tahoe properties to hold their own. Right now, Reno and Lake Tahoe are hurting to the tune of a 25% decrease in gaming revenue since 2007.

The article describes that Reno properties are becoming more akin to the casinos that cater to the locals market, similar to how Stations Casinos operate their Las Vegas properties. The problem is that there may be too much casino capacity in Reno compared to the approximately 250,000 population base. In addition, the locations of the various Reno properties are not as well positioned as the suburban-located properties in the Las Vegas area.