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We see all the news about the decline of visitation and revenue on the Strip, but what about the locals casinos? I suppose it's tough to gauge visitation to places like Red Rock and Aliante, but do the revenue numbers give any indication of how the locals casinos are faring compared to the drop on the Strip?
Yes they do. And by comparison, the Strip looks like it's pretty much alone in declining revenue numbers.
For example, Strip gaming revenue in December was down 6%, while the locals casinos enjoyed a nearly 6% increase.
And for full-year 2025, the Strip had $8.8 billion in gaming revenue, basically flat year over year, very slightly up by 0.03% (that's a third of a percentage point or less than $3 million).
Meanwhile, Boulder Strip casinos were up 3.8% ($996 million), downtown 2.1% ($951.2 million), North Las Vegas 4.6% ($298 million), and balance of Clark County 1.2% ($1.9 billion). Altogether, that's an average increase of just under 3% and total revenue of $4.15 billion, almost half the Strip's.
And these are anything but isolated numbers. In fact, the locals market has a 40-plus-year track record of outperforming the Strip in economic downturns (except the Great Recession). Since 1984, annual gross gaming revenue on the Strip declined 11 times compared to six times for the locals market.
For example, during COVID (2020), locals casinos were down 23% compared to 43% on the Strip. In 2013 and 2014, during the recovery from the Great Recession, locals revenue declined less than 0.3% compared with a 2% decline on the Strip.
For the past year or so, Wall Street analysts haven't been able to say enough good things about Station Casinos and Boyd, while they've been somewhat dour about MGM and Caesars. As for 2026, they see more of the same, which has prompted Big Gaming cheerleaders to come out in force, touting the filled convention calendar and strong advance bookings. Time will tell.