Category: Casino News

At the risk of mocking the handicapped, we have to pick on Bally’s Corp. again this week. Our Atlantic City correspondent visited Bally’s Atlantic City and had the valet-area door opened for him by someone who promptly hit him up for money as a “disabled veteran.” The panhandling didn’t stop there: Bally’s is now reduced to hitting up its customer database for potential investors in $1.7 billion Bally’s Chicago. (Remember, just $250 gets you in a share.) There’s a catch: To be an “accredited investor” you need to be female or BIPOC (“In general …”). So that’s going to cut down on the investor pool a teensy bit.

There are two ways of looking at last month’s gambling grosses out of Atlantic City. One is that business is good, remaining at the stellar level of 2023 (if no higher, admittedly). Two, that business is extraordinary, being 11% higher than in 2019. Of course, Big Gaming will break out its crying towel and try to spin the numbers are a sign that the sky is falling, but don’t buy it. Boardwalk casinos grossed $232 million, ever so slightly ahead of iGaming, which brought in $228 million. This has prompted some pundits to instantly proclaim the demise of brick-and-mortar gambling in New Jersey, but let’s not get carried away.

A second running of the Las Vegas Grand Prix has come and gone, without moving the needle on the Las Vegas Strip. In fact, baccarat play was dreadful. Casino takings fell 18%, as players wagered 8.5% less on the game. Wasn’t Formula One supposed to bring in the whales? Guess again. The one Strip growth area was a low-roller one: slot play. Coin-in was up 5.5%. But Lady Luck was with the players, who made the casinos pay in the form of a 2.5% decline in one-armed bandit income. Table game revenues also suffered, down 5% on 9% less wagering.

If you’re racing to the bottom, you have to be an early riser to beat Virgin Las Vegas President Cliff Atkinson. Not content with offering his employees insultingly low wages, he recently and shamelessly played the race card, in an effort to divide and conquer the Culinary Union. When that evidently didn’t work, he called out his goon squad.

Finally! November brought some bonafide good news from Louisiana, as casino revenues finally trended upward in a manner in which we can believe. They not only rebounded 11% from last year, they were 2% higher than 2019. New product—Treasure Chest 2.0 and Caesars New Orleans—drove the bus, accounting for most of the upsurge from 2023 and all of the improvement from 2019 (a 3% swing). Treasure Chest exploded to $12 million (+88%) and Caesars leapt 28.5% to $26.5 million. Other New Orleans casinos and racinos were revenue-positive, too: Boomtown New Orleans ($10 million, 5%), Fair Grounds ($3 million, 7.5%) and Amelia Belle ($2.5 million, 6%). The excitement in the Crescent City probably gave Caesars Entertainment a welcome distraction from woebegone Horseshoe Lake Charles, which plunged 12% to $6.5 million. Golden Nugget jumped 11% to $28 million, ahead of still-impressive L’Auberge du Lac ($26 million, 9.5%) and Delta Downs ($14 million, 17%).