Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Nevada Casino Revenue Drops

Bloomberg Businessweek reports an AP story about the 10% year over year drop in Nevada casino win for May.  The state's casinos earned $885 million in May 2012 vs. $984 million in May 2011 - a good size difference.  The Gaming Control Board couched this bad news by stating that this month would have had a tough comparison due to the very good May of 2011.  Still, a 10% drop is tough to explain away that easily.

The "explanation" given by the spokesman actually makes a better argument as an indictment.  The spokesman called this May's numbers a "statistical anomaly," given that there was a strong events calendar, particularly in Las Vegas.  This May, downtown Vegas casino revenue dropped 2 percent, but strip revenue dropped a whopping 18 percent.  How is that an anomaly where you admittedly had a good calendar to draw visitors, but your gaming win drops 18 percent?  I suppose an anomaly, but not in a good way and should raise more red flags rather than less.

Not all regions dropped, however.  Laughlin had a 20 percent gain and Boulder had a 9 percent gain.  So, that puts to rest the "bad month for comparison purposes argument."  The true disasters in my opinion were up north in Reno and Lake Tahoe.  Reno only dropped 6 percent year over year, but Lake Tahoe dropped a unbelievable 27 percent.  Reno and Lake Tahoe have suffered due to the expanded tribal gaming operations in California for a while now, and it is not going to improve unless those regions do something drastic.  You can read posts on California tribal gaming here and here and my post with regard to what Reno and Lake Tahoe should do here.  A post regarding actions with regard to Las Vegas can be found here.


Add to Technorati Favorites

No comments: