{"id":14868,"date":"2014-10-28T10:21:13","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T18:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=14868"},"modified":"2014-10-28T10:21:13","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T18:21:13","slug":"players-take-vegas-to-the-cleaners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/players-take-vegas-to-the-cleaners\/","title":{"rendered":"Players take Vegas to the cleaners"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSCN1282\"<\/a>Baccarat players stayed home or played smaller last month. The Strip’s most important revenue driver dropped 30% on 12.5% less play. So luck and players’ wallets were both working in the casinos’ disfavor. Despite a 2% increase in coin-in, slot revenues were down 4%. Non-baccarat table play was down 7.5% and house win fell 13%. Bottom line, Strip casinos got their clocks cleaned by players. By contrast, locals play was 7%\u00a0more remunerative for casinos — albeit not in Downtown<\/strong>, where revenue fell 4%. North Las Vegas<\/strong> was flat but play on the Boulder Strip<\/strong> leapt 14%. Laughlin<\/strong> grew revenue 4% and the nebulous “balance of Clark County<\/strong>” rose 3%. On average, the Las Vegas Strip<\/strong> was down 12%.<\/p>\n

* Penn National Gaming<\/strong> parent Gaming & Leisure Properties Inc<\/strong>. has hit its first snag. GLPI was poised to purchase Meadows Racetrack & Casino<\/strong> from Cannery Casino Resorts<\/strong>. But yesterday matters took a hard left for the worse. GLPI is now suing Cannery, claiming\u00a0fraud, breach of the membership interest purchase agreement, and violation\u00a0of a related consulting agreement. With masterly understatement, J.P. Morgan<\/strong> analyst Joseph Greff<\/strong> wrote, “GLPI is unable to predict the effect this suit may have on the closing of the transaction.”<\/p>\n

GLPI, meanwhile has substantial pocket change on hand: $31 million. Managing entity Penn finished\u00a0$100 million Mahoning Valley Race Track<\/strong> for $88 million and $89.5 million Dayton Raceway<\/strong> came in at $85 million. It’s nice to see a company that recognizes that a million here and a million there adds up to real money.<\/p>\n

* Headline of the day<\/strong>: “Casino industry is Macau’s largest employer.” No shit, Sherlock. Breaking down the numbers, gambling directly employs 81,500 people, far \"Grand-Lisboa\"<\/a>outstripping the (massive) construction industry’s 56,000. And those jobs aren’t going anywhere, unlike the — by its very nature — peripatetic construction sector. While gaming represents 21% of the Macao<\/strong> workforce, that’s not counting indirectly created jobs<\/a> in the F&B, retail and hospitality sectors. You won’t get rich working in a Macanese casino — $8,512 a year — but you’ll do much better than the market median, 31% better. Still, that factor isn’t likely to quell labor unrest that’s rolling through<\/a> the casino industry.<\/p>\n

Players, meanwhile will have a hard time finding a table with a bet minimum of less than $65. And even those only represent 13% of table inventory. The overwhelming majority aren’t taking action of less than $130 a hand. Research firm CLSA<\/strong> calls this “astronomical” and notes that casinos would like to accelerate the pace of play, too: “The launch of new products like non-commission baccarat, fast-action baccarat or electronic table games are ways to improve the speed of game, which in turn increases the number of games that can be played in a fixed timeframe and subsequently the gaming revenue.” How players feel about getting less time on device remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Baccarat players stayed home or played smaller last month. The Strip’s most important revenue driver dropped 30% on 12.5% less play. So luck and players’ wallets were both working in the casinos’ disfavor. Despite a 2% increase in coin-in, slot … 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":[88,73,51,14,49,62,78,69,95,111,8,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14868"}],"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=14868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14869,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14868\/revisions\/14869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}