November in Vegas: The house lost; Players jilt Caesars in A.C.

There’s no other way of saying it (although many are trying). Strip casinos got their clocks cleaned in November as Lady Luck favored the punters, not the house. A 13% dropoff on the Strip was driven by a perfect storm of factors. Sports books relearned the old lesson that it’s not whether you won or lost; it’s whether you covered the spread. Coin-in at the slots was up 4% but holds were looser and casinos took in 10% less than 2011. Same at the tables: Players put 5% more on the felt and casinos lost 10% more than in the year previous. Baccarat dealt the cruelest blow. Wagers were down 16% and fortune smiled on the players, as the casinos raked in 25% less, year over year.

Off-Strip, Boyd Gaming (-14%) actually fared much better than average for locals casinos. (I foresee some long faces at Station Casinos, however.) Downtown revenues fell 17%, and there were steep dives on the Boulder Strip (-26%) and in North Las Vegas (-24%). At a mere 2% slippage, much-abused Laughlin did mighty well and snowbirds helped the volatile Lake Tahoe market become of the very few to report revenue-positive numbers (up 27%). Of course, it there’s one time of the year you’d expect discretionary dollars to dry up, it’s November and December, when Santa Claus is making out like a bandit. As for the Strip casinos, recovery is a double-edged sword: The players are back, in the main. But they’re winning, too. Winning big. That wasn’t in the script!

Slot players are avoiding the casinos of Caesars Entertainment like the plague. That’s the big takeaway from last month’s Atlantic City numbers. Coin-in was 18% down and revenue fell 16%. By contrast, Borgata eked out a small (2%) increase in slot revenue despite an even smaller decrease in handle. Table-game drop was off at all five casinos (7% at Borgata, 8% at the Caesars quartet) but luck frowned upon Boyd, whose table revenues were -12%, compared to Caesars’ aggregate -5.5%. Citywide, casino revenues were down 9% (or 13% if you don’t count Revel). Since December 2011 was a rare revenue-positive month along the Boardwalk (4%), last month’s data isn’t quite as bad as it looks — certainly not when post-Sandy disorder is taken into account. Casino by casino, percentage comparisons are all over the map and wholly useless. They range from Trump Taj Mahal‘s 92% plunge to the Tropicana‘s 46% growth spurt. At just barely under a $10 million gross, Revel was right down there with all the grind joints: Atlantic Club ($10 million), Resorts Atlantic City ($9.5 million) and penurious Trump Plaza ($6 million). If Unite-Here financial projections are correct, Revel has to displace Harrah’s Atlantic City ($29 million) in the #2 spot to stay in business. Maybe not … but whoever thought a Colony Capital-owned casino would be looking down on Revel?

Wall Street follies. One analyst of whom I know got a bit fretful when Bally Technologies then-CEO Richard Haddrill (now board chairman) ceded his title to longtime sidekick Ramesh Srinivasan, even though it was a phased-in, orderly transition and Bally was having a strong quarter. But how to account for the pall of silence that has fallen over gaming analysts after Caesars’ sudden and unexplained ouster of Don Marrandino? You’d think a change of such consequence would get somebody talking but Wall Street‘s chattering classes have turned into signifying monkeys. The only substantive commentary has been the fairly steady downward march of Caesars’ share price, which ended the week at all of $7.08. If you bought into the IPO, I hope you sold that crap while the getting was good.