This is what “recovery” looks like

Here’s our new business model: a Strip that hasn’t gotten past “dead cat bounce” yet and emaciated revenues elsewhere. Instead of longing for the snows of yesterday and invoking the magic number “2007,” the top minds in the industry are going to have to accept — presuming they haven’t already — that the half-decade of 2003-07 was great while it lasted but it can’t be wished back into existence. What were record levels of casino revenue six years ago now have to prop up the unsustainable growth and spending that ran amok in the years that followed, not to mention other attendant calamities.

S&G defines “flat,” for simplicity’s sake, as gains/losses of less than 1%. And “flat” — or “flattish,” as J.P. Morgan puts it — is what April was, at best (especially in Elko, down only by a few hundredths of a percent) plus or minus a few scattered glimmers of hope. As Wendover goes, so does Nevada and that market wasjustthisclose to matching its prior-year revenue. But not quite.

The best news for Nevada is that tourism was marginally up (i.e., not quite 1%) and the good news for gaming was the Strip was only very, very slight off April 2009’s gross-revenue number. Woo-hoo. Oh, and ADRs nudged 3% higher — despite a very highly diluted market.

Although customers played lucky statewide (casino win as -16%), Strip casinos had the better of them in everything but slots (where revenue fell 5% and handle was down 4%), with baccarat win +11% and roulette +16%. Sports books got clocked, though.

Statewide, revenue was its weakest in seven months. Throughout Clark County, the numbers make you want to put a gun to your head, whether it’s Boulder Strip‘s -25.5% or Downtown‘s -9% or a “mere” 5% slippage in Laughlin. Upstate, in Lake Tahoe — where two casinos have already closed this year — the tailspin seems irreversible: -21%.

Casinos and customers have one thing in common, though: The preponderance of misery is concentrated at the bottom. Whatever improvements we’re seeing are trickling up, not down … especially in a state whose overreliance on casino revenues is paving the way toward yet another special session (the second of this year) to correct a budget deficit that widens with every casino shortfall.

At least MGM Mirage had some good news out of Michigan, where MGM Grand Detroit revenues are headed back upward, +3%. Motor City grew market share but saw revenues drop 5%. Greektown has apparently exhausted its novelty factor and rather quickly, too. Market share share shrank and revenues fell 7%.

Its bankruptcy reorganization continues to cause headaches, so much so that the state is considering giving its prospective hedge-fund owner an exemption from regulatory oversight. As for MGM, it has an outstanding property in Motown — the gain was driven by non-gaming amenities — and it was only a matter of time before the market gravitating back toward it.