Although casinos across the nation have been swooning in November, results in Nevada—which we feared would take it worse than average—were in line with national trends, a victory of sorts. Statewide, gaming win fell 18% and the Las Vegas Strip, which has been the epicenter of the problem, tumbled 32% but frankly we expected a lot worse. Locals came out to play, too, and win from them was up 6%. Since October ended on a Saturday (a non-reporting day), a weekend’s worth of previous-month revenue helped fatten the November results, offsetting one less weekend last month. December is not likely to be such a positive story, casino-capacity restrictions having been tightened to 25% on Nov. 24.
As far as Strip casinos were concerned, baccarat continued to be a black hole, with players wagering less (-25%) and winning more, are revenues toppled 45%. Other table games fell 32% on 35% less wagering. Strip slots slid 29% (to $197 million) on 33.5% less coin-in. Even tighter holds didn’t help. Overall, Strip casinos grossed $350 million. Downtown the story has to be Circa, whose first full month coincided with a 2% increase in gaming revenues ($53 million), Derek Stevens‘ rising tide lifting all boats. North Las Vegas was off 2% ($19 million) but the Boulder Strip was boffo, up 18% to $68.5 million, while the balance of Clark County was flat at $105 million. Laughlin missed the boat, flopping 19% to $33 million. Mesquite was off 8% to $11 million while Wendover slipped 17% to $15.5 million.
Giving in to greedy NFL team owners rarely works out for the taxpayers, Las Vegas picked a terrible time to throw billions of dollars at the Raiders… We sat here in Los Angeles without an NFL team for decades, and we did not miss all that much, what we ended up getting was a stadium entirely built with private money, except for a few tax incentives given by the city of Inglewood. With Covid puncturing tax revenues, it could get bad for Las Vegas and Clark County. The Raiders tried to get taxpayer money a million times in Los Angeles and Oakland, but they could not get it done. When an NFL team owner sticks his hand out, push it aside and tell him you will watch the games on television.
Here is what the NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said about possible NBA expansion: “One of our focuses as the league office is always on how do you create better competition,” Silver said. “So that’s one of the things that we continue to think about as we consider expansion. It’s an economic issue and it’s a competitive issue for us. So it’s one that we’ll continue to study.”
Eventually the NBA will expand and since there is currently 30 teams the NBA would add 2 teams. Seattle would definitely get a team (the SuperSonics left Seattle after the 2007-2008 season for Oklahoma City) and Las Vegas would be the favorite to get the second team.
Sometime in the fall I will be out in Vegas and I can’t wait to visit both Circa and Resorts World. They both look great and hopefully the vaccine rollout will start speeding up so the economy can start improving again.
When football season starts in September of 2021 both college and NFL teams should probably have mostly full capacity in their stadiums which will be fantastic to see. Happy New Year and good riddance to 2020.