{"id":759,"date":"2008-07-08T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-09T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/7\/8\/Indiana-It-sure-could-be-worse"},"modified":"2017-12-14T09:05:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T17:05:26","slug":"indiana-it-sure-could-be-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/indiana-it-sure-could-be-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"Indiana: It sure could be worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

… because you could be Illinois<\/strong>, where June gambling revenues went into the toilet (-21%). Which isn’t to say that Indiana<\/strong>‘s numbers look good only by comparison. In fact, the Hoosier State may be benefiting from the Land of Lincoln’s misery. It’s sort of a “Yes, but …” situation.<\/p>\n

Yes, Indiana would be a lot worse off (-12%) without two new racinos, Hoosier Park<\/strong> and Indiana Live<\/strong>. Their addition has kept gambling revenues virtually flat from June ’07. And that’s two flat months (as in variance of less than 1%) after eight<\/em> months of declines. In terms of gross, Hoosier Park vaulted into the #5 spot, while Indiana Live checked in at #9.<\/p>\n

Yes, northern Indiana initially looks like it got clobbered (-11.5%). But once you back out Boyd Gaming<\/strong>‘s Blue Chip<\/em> riverboat — which is something of a special case — the picture improves considerably. All northern riverboats except Resort International<\/strong>‘s are down, but not on average as much as the southern Indiana riverboats.<\/p>\n

All of which suggests that gamblers fleeing Illinois’ new smoking ban are taking refuge aboard the northwest Indiana boats. Blue Chip<\/em>, which is the closest one to the tribal Four Winds Casino Resort, across the Michigan state line, is really taking it on the chin: -39.7% in June. Boyd’s struggles here — and with its Florida parimutuel<\/a> (which isn’t even shown on the company’s official Web site) — make it tempting to call for retrenchment. But, in the case of Blue Chip<\/em>, it’s on pace for $190 million in revenue, which is scarcely chump change … good enough for the #6 spot in statewide gross.<\/p>\n

Dollarwise, Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong>‘s Horseshoe Hammond<\/em> now enjoys the top spot, once the exclusive preserve of Penn National<\/strong>‘s Argosy Lawrenceburg<\/em>. The latter, however, still has bragging rights to the largest slice of market share (just under 12%, according to the Indiana Gaming Commission<\/strong>) in the state.<\/p>\n

Amongst the southern Indiana casinos, only Pinnacle Entertainment<\/strong>‘s Belterra<\/strong> enjoyed [sic<\/em>] a single-digit decline in June, while almost everyone else suffered double-digit slumps.<\/p>\n

The lone gainer was — surprise! — Columbia Sussex<\/strong>‘s Casino Aztar<\/em>, up 2.5%. A recent, regulator-placating, promotion-friendly change of administration at Casino Aztar<\/em> may be the X factor here, as the riverboat followed January-April declines with two months of gains … the only casino in the state to post that pattern. (Resorts Int’l must really<\/em> be onto something, what with five straight months of growth in the teeth of an adverse economy.)<\/p>\n

Casino Aztar<\/em>‘s gain appears to have been French Lick Casino<\/strong>‘s loss. The lowest-grossing casino in the state, its novelty factor may have worn off, as it’s down by almost 25% in June. Then again, French Lick’s numbers have been all over the place this year, so who knows? However, it was perceived as the primary competitive threat to Casino Aztar<\/em>, a challenge that may now have been blunted. We’ll see.<\/p>\n

And can anybody tell me why two adjacent casino boats, owned by the same company (Don Barden<\/strong>‘s Majestic Star<\/em> and Majestic Star II<\/em>) can have such disparate results? One is off by 4% while the other is down 13%<\/em>. Then again, who can explain anything Barden-related these days?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… because you could be Illinois, where June gambling revenues went into the toilet (-21%). Which isn’t to say that Indiana‘s numbers look good only by comparison. In fact, the Hoosier State may be benefiting from the Land of Lincoln’s … 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":[60,15,7,68,69,30,20,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759"}],"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=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20772,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/20772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}