Customer bucks continued flowing big-time in Missouri casinos last month, up 19% over 2021. The total gross was $146 million as customers spent 2.5% more per visit and came in 16% greater numbers. Almost casinos were revenue-positive (some spectacularly so) with two Caesars Entertainment exceptions, including Lumiere Place, down 3% to $11 million. Let’s hope that the Horseshoe rebranding comes with some capex reinvestment. Ameristar St. Charles (pictured) easily remained the top dog, up 5% to $23 million. Hollywood St. Louis leapt 47% to $17.5 million while sibling property River City jumped 46% to $19.5 million.
Rebranding continued to benefit Bally’s Kansas City, vaulting 45% to $9 million. Ameristar Kansas City led the market with $16 million, up 19.5%, with Argosy Riverside close behind at $14 million (up 23%), while Harrah’s North Kansas City lost market share to everyone else, down 8.5% to $12 million. Coming off a surprisingly strong 2021, Century Casinos continued to perform well outstate. Century Cape Girardeau hopped 25% to $4 million and Century Caruthersville gained 10% to finish at $5.5 million. Century is particularly to be commended for reinvesting the improved results in property upgrades and augmentations. Caesars, are you taking notes?
Illinois has just reported sports betting numbers from January, undoubtedly fattened by $60 million in Super Bowl futures betting. Overall handle was $867.5 million and $59 million in revenue was won by the books. (Though the state, with an $11 million tax haul, was the true victor.) All but 4% of handle was derived from mobile wagering, led by DraftKings (34%), closely rivaled by FanDuel (31%). BetRivers was third with 16.5%, followed by PointsBet (9%) and Barstool Sports (7%). All other operators—including Caesars Sportsbook—had negligible results. (FanDuel got significantly more revenue bang for its buck than DraftKings, a 40% share vs. 31%.) It is into this maelstrom the BetMGM just plunged. Will it grow the market or simply carve out a niche amongst the also-rans? Tune in around May 8 to find out.
“The NFL did sports books a massive favor by expanding its regular season and playoff schedule,” said PlayUSA analyst Eric Ramsey. “The fact that those additional games were all squeezed into one month helped produce some eye-popping numbers in Illinois and beyond.” For all the emphasis on the NFL, football handle ($224 million) was overshadowed by basketball, which engendered $276 million in action. We’ll have to wait until May to find out but PlayUSA predicts close to $1 billion in handle this month, due to a combination of March Madness and the March 5 recension of rules requiring in-person registration for sports-betting accounts. Let the online registration (re)commence!
Macao continues to be the place where casino stocks go to die. Last Friday saw the evaporation of $3.5 billion in marketing capitalization of gaming companies exposed to the sickly Chinese enclave. The hemorrhage on the Hong Kong bourse continued over the weekend, with Wynn Macau down 5%, Sands China off 7% and MGM China hit 6.5%. Nor were the home teams spared, with SJM Holdings slipping 7.5% and Galaxy Entertainment off 5.5%. This really shouldn’t have happened, considering that casino concessions had just been unilaterally extended through Dec. 31, a six-month clemency that shows the local government can’t get its act together regarding re-tender of the concessions. Perhaps it was the levy that City Hall imposed in return for those extensions, which includes a $200 million set-aside per operator to pay furloughed workers, should their concession not be renewed.
Or maybe it was tourism described as “subdued,” thanks to our old friend, Covid-19. Casino revenue for the first week of this month was a meager (for Macao) $135 million. That’s 78% off 2019’s pace, if only 32% down from 2021’s emaciated canter. Visitation in late February/early March was also down, 26% off from the week previous. China imposes a pretty high bar for admission to Macao. As Sanford C. Bernstein analysts write, “Macau continues to require in-bound travelers from Guangdong to present a COVID test taken within 48 hours prior to entry, while air arrivals from other provinces remain at 7-day test requirement (although this could rise if cases become elevated in other parts of China).” Those same boffins estimate that March will be 25% down from February, enough to cause a stock-picker gloom. Genting Group, meanwhile, has made the best of a bad situation in Macao by scrapping a planned casino and turning into a hotel-only play.
Finally, the Nevada casino industry dodged a bullet when Carson City District Court Judge James Wilson struck down a ballot question aimed at raising the gaming privilege tax (as well as the odiously high sales tax). Judge Wilson’s ruling hinged on semantics involved in the use of the word “shall” by state Attorney General Barbara Cegavske in an opinion permitting the initiatives to go forward. It’s all quite convoluted but Big Gaming has lucked out, retaining its 6.75% tax rate (lowest in the U.S.) instead of a 9.75% impost. A Nevada Independent poll found heavy voter support to socking it to the casinos but the sales-tax increase would have been dead on arrival.
Your posts often are missing the usual links on the right side, replaced with a link “There has been a critical error on this website.”, which takes you to Amazon. The cries out to be fixed. Is there a plan to fix this?
Lumiere/Caesars has finally replaced the carpet but the same surly “customer service” attitude remains along with the same awful food options and skinny promotions. The property will be helped by the return of baseball for a full season.