{"id":10471,"date":"2013-02-08T12:16:55","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T20:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=10471"},"modified":"2013-02-08T12:16:55","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T20:16:55","slug":"december-in-vegas-the-house-won-sheldon-of-la-mancha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/december-in-vegas-the-house-won-sheldon-of-la-mancha\/","title":{"rendered":"December in Vegas: The house won; Sheldon of La Mancha"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"There are gambling markets … and then there’s Las Vegas<\/strong>. Players opened their wallets — oh, did they ever — and lost big. Casino winnings on the Las Vegas Strip<\/strong> were up 13.5% and Nevada<\/strong> casinos overall did 10% better than last year, for a statewide gross of $943 million. Downtown<\/strong> casino winnings shot up almost 20%. That’s right: 20%. Even Strip slot play was up 4%, thanks to a combination of slightly higher coin-in and incrementally tighter hold. But what mainly drove those balmy Strip numbers, of course, was baccarat, where $185 million was raked in. Whales and smaller aquatic fauna bet larger (up 23%) and lost bigger (ditto). Other table games saw 11.5% higher play and the house was lucky indeed, its winning rising nearly 18%. (According to J.P. Morgan<\/strong>, 18.5%.) Except for some outlying Clark County<\/strong> markets like Mesquite<\/strong> and Primm<\/strong> — as well as Reno<\/strong> (-4%) and Elko<\/strong> (-2%), all significant Nevada jurisdictions reported improvement, from 2% in Laughlin<\/strong> to 14% in North Las Vegas<\/strong> and 17% on the Boulder Strip<\/strong>. However, Boyd Gaming<\/strong> missed out on the fun, its revenues up “only” 4%, according to Deutsche Bank<\/strong>. Maybe it’s those “Night of the Living Dead<\/a>” TV spots …<\/p>\n

The Strip will have a tough time repeating this double-digit feat in January, which saw a 29% revenue surge last year. Particularly difficult to replicate will be the explosive performance of hyper-volatile Lake Tahoe<\/strong>, up 57% last month and, no, that’s not a typo.<\/p>\n

\"\"Where’s “Alcorcon”?<\/strong> It’s outside Madrid<\/strong> and you’ll soon he hearing lots about it<\/a>, since that’s where Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> will build his $22 billion EuroVegas<\/strong>. But first, he’s got to persuade banks to part with $14 billion, to be spent over a 10-year period and recouped … God knows when. If the super-duper-megaresort were to return a best-case 20% of investment annually (unlikely), Adelson would be 95 when the project pays off — and I’m taking the “over” on that one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are gambling markets … and then there’s Las Vegas. Players opened their wallets — oh, did they ever — and lost big. Casino winnings on the Las Vegas Strip were up 13.5% and Nevada casinos overall did 10% better … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[88,60,28,22,76,49,53,126,78,79,12,9,19,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10471"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10473,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10471\/revisions\/10473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}