LV gambling down 2.1% last year

While regional casinos are rebounding LV Strip was down 2.1% last year. Some of the markets that rebounded were LA up 21% and OH up 12% from the previous year. Last month revenue was up 15% in IN and 9.6% in MO.

 

Thanks, but I'd like to dive deeper into those stats. Would you post a link to the source?

 

I don't have a source other than briefs in a business section in a paper.

 

I think the gambling bloggers cover this stuff a bit more thoroughly and they tend to only post weekdays. I hadn't seen anything on the LV numbers but Stiffs and Georges has posted on an uptick in the Midwest. Of course, there has been no attempt to take in to account the Polar Vortex of last winter to El Nino this one. I mean, there were periods of time were the NW Indiana casinos were completely inaccessible do to closed expressways and no one got the connection that led to slow business this time last year.

That being said, I am interested if this is an ongoing pattern. In the larger regional markets, there is more competition compared to what you see on the strip. Has the tipping point been reached for some gamblers?

 

Here's a link to a UNLV study going year by year from 1984-2014:

http://gaming.unlv.edu/reports/NV_1984_present.pdf

Looks like both the LV Strip and Boulder Strip saw gaming revenues decline of around 2 pct each, while Downtown saw a 2 pct uptick. However, Las Vegas broke its record for number of visitors (now I think over 41 million per year) and with increased room rates and resort fees, I'm sure they made up a good chunk of whatever they surrendered at the tables.

 

I still go to my local, but the weird thing is I'm *Increasing* my trips to Vegas. For a long time, I couldn't afford to go often (or at all) and I'm now in a much better position. I went last Nov and am going in April, with the intent of trying to go at least 2x a year. And I don't go to the clubs, etc. I like to gamble.

I'm really torn on this, honestly. I'm sure there are a lot of people who like/love to gamble and previously, did their annual trip to Vegas just to get their fix but now don't need to because they can go in their own town. But I still think there are huge numbers of people who need vacations and driving down the street isn't a vacation. A slow decline in gambling revenue in Vegas is inevitable, I suppose, given their diversification of attractions (a lot of people go that don't even gamble--when I went in November, I went with my sis and brother-in-law and they aren't gamblers. My BIL played a few short sessions of BJ and my sister played like 10 minutes of slots).

What's strange is that the decline in gambling revenue has to be driven by those who are siphoned off to local casinos and fewer casual players. So far, Vegas's reaction has been to increase space dedicated to slots, removing table games or adding table games with worse HE (like carnival games) or tightening the rules (increasing 6:5). I wonder if it ever reaches the point where they realize the only players left are those that play because they really like to gamble and they loosen the BJ rules, etc to increase play/retention of those players.

 

Good article by UNLV's Dr. David Schwartz on the trends:

http://vegasseven.com/2015/01/27/nongaming-activities-continue-pay-bills-strip-casinos/

 

Good article... thanks for sharin'. The Las Vegas consumer is changing... raising Benny Binon from the grave and bringing back the $2.99 buffet is not the model to follow. It's NOT 1962 anymore!!!

 

Interesting looking at the statistics and seeing that, since 2007 (the high mark in gaming revenues before the recession), the amount of table games on the Strip has gone up about 3 percent, revenue derived from tables up around 5 percent, while the number of slots on the Strip has fallen over 10 percent and revenue derived from slots down nearly 17 percent.... all with roughly the same number of casinos.

 

Just doing back-of-the-envelope calcs this guys numbers look way off from what's in the abstracts. I know he's a professor but he may have had some student crunch the numbers and they messed up. Or I'm looking at the wrong numbers, but I don't think I am.

I'll put it into excel later to double check, but just curious if anyone could confirm his growth numbers for the strip casinos.

 

Kickin, the article focuses on July 2013 - June 2014, while you might be looking at calendar year 2014 numbers. IIRC, the second half of 2014 wasn't very good at all for the casinos compared to the second half of 2013.

 

That's shouldn't be it. I'm looking at their fiscal years, the same abstracts on the gaming board site he references.

I wasn't trying to check his numbers, it was inadvertent. I wanted to see what they looked like if you deducted comps. One of my pet peeves with they way they release revenue numbers is they include non-cash revenue from comps. So for instance 30% of beverage revenue is from comps. Actual beverage sales are about 70% of what they state and those increased by only 0.5%. Room/Food/Bev/Other net of comps is what I'd want to look at to see how non-gaming revenue is doing.

Anyway while looking at those I noticed his numbers were way off regardless of whether he broke out comps or not.

 

If you want the numbers and really get into them - head for - - > http://gaming.nv.gov/index.aspx

 

Hmm. That's interesting, I didn't know that and would have thought (without knowing) it was the opposite. I support that supports there will be a good future (in the medium term) for table games. And I suppose 3:2 won't go away entirely...just hopefully it stays within reach (once it gets to be only available on $100+ minimums, it will be largely beyond me).