Author: David Mckee

Gambling revenues held the line in Missouri last month, flat with last year. The $155 million tally was also 8% better than in June of 2019. At $25 million, Ameristar St. Charles continued to dominate, up 4.5%. River City edged sister property Hollywood St. Louis $21 million to $20.5 million. River City was up 4%, Hollywood 1.5%. Horseshoe St. Louis, despite its downtown presence during the height of baseball season, plunged 17% to $11 million.

Bally’s Corp. is usually a subject of fun in these pages, so let’s flip the script and congratulate the company on the 45th anniversary of Bally’s Atlantic City. Above you see the buses full of gamblers pulling up at what used to be Park Place Casino and has been through more incarnations subsequently than you can shake a stick at. In Monopoly, Park Place will set you back $350 and is one of the blue-chip properties in the game. In recent years, Bally’s picked up the erstwhile Park Place Casino from Caesars Entertainment for what seemed like only $350 and if it was ever a premium spot on the Boardwalk those days are long gone.

It was a bouncy May for casinos both on the Las Vegas Strip and locally. The former was up 3.5%, reaching gambling revenue of $742.5 million. Locals casinos hopped 5% for a haul of $277.5 million. The Strip win was particularly impressive given that baccarat was down 6.5% to $122 million. The problem wasn’t hold percentage so much as a 2% dip in action. But other table games leapt 13% to $217.5 million on wagering that was 11% higher. Strip slots saw 6.5% more coin-in, to tally $403 million (+2.5%). Locals slots were up 3% to $229.5 million on 4.5% more action. Locals table win was $48 million, a 17% gain spurred by 16.5% higher wagering.

ESPN Bet was supposed to be the salvation of Penn Entertainment. Now it is looking like its downfall. Penn’s venture into online gambling has had very mixed results. iGaming has brought with it great success. Sports betting, however, has been an unmitigated disaster. After PR and stock-price debacle Barstool Sports turned turtle, irresponsible Penn CEO Jay Snowden sold it back to Dave Portnoy for $1. (That’s not a typo.) Throwing good money after bad, Snowden doubled down with ESPN Bet. At first it looked like a potential winner. But it has lost money hand over fist, with no end to the red ink in sight.

Casinos on the Boardwalk enjoyed a 5% bounce last month, recording $239 million in winnings. That’s 7% above 2019 numbers despite Covid-19 having ineradicably changed players’ habits—and Big Gaming was only to happy to cash in with OSB and Internet casinos, never mind what they say today. Four casinos were revenue-negative and three of them had one other thing in common: They are all owned by Caesars Entertainment. The Roman Empire really needs to look to its laurels in Atlantic City because it clearly has a problem there.