Looking at the January 2010 figures for gaming revenue in January 2010 we see that the Silver State is down 3.2% on last year, and the Strip is down 3%. In analyzing these numbers one has to take into account that in January 2009 the whole of the Chinese New Year was covered, but this year it spills over into February. However, there is still no sign that a growth in the tourism dollar is going to ignite the Las Vegas real estate market.
The figures released by the Gaming Control Board show that gaming revenues on the Las Vegas Strip were $495 million in January, compared to $510.4 million in the same month a year ago. Downtown took a less severe hit, and was down just 2.1%, whilst North Las Vegas was down 0.2%. We could hypothesize that this is because the Strip has the biggest exposure to Asian tourists and that February will give us hope, but on the other hand Mesquite is down 10.4% and Laughlin took a 14% hit on the same month a year ago.
The casino industry recovery is something that developers desperately want to see, but even with Chinese New Year straddling January and February this year there is not much to get excited about. The American economy has dug itself such a massive hole that it has to climb rather than jumps out – are these January figures a foothold?
The January 2009 Nevada gaming revenues were a 15 per cent drop on the previous year, so at least the rate of decline is slowing. But it is not an even slowdown, with slot machine volume down 9.9 percent versus table games at 2.2 percent. It is high stakes baccarat that has been propping up the Strip – revenues if $107 million were collected in January. Unfortunately the real estate industry is not going to be rehabilitated off the back of some baccarat whales.
Nevada collected $59.7 million in gaming taxes for the period, compared with nearly $47.1 million a year ago, according to the Gaming Control Board.
Collections were helped by the repayment of outstanding debts associated with high-end customers.
“Much of the money collected came from markers owed for the New Year’s weekend,” said Control Board Tax and License Division Chief Frank Streshley. “January was one of our strongest months for tax collections in some time.”
For the first eight months of the fiscal year, Nevada has collected $406.3 million in gaming taxes, a decline of 1.6 percent compared with $412.9 million collected for the same time period in fiscal year 2009.
Streshley said the tax collections were trending ahead of predictions made by the Nevada’s Economic Forum for the fiscal year. The forum’s panel thought gaming tax collections would be down 2.5 percent for fiscal 2010 compared with fiscal 2009.