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In an up and down year Wendover casinos saw down once again in April according to Tuesday’s report from the Nevada gaming Control board.
According to the report Gaming April win fell 4.36 percent to $13.7 million from the same month last year, the worst performance for April since 2008 the year when the Great Recession arrived in Wendover.
The Nevada/Utah border town had been experiencing a mild return to the plus column and for the fiscal year is still up 3.83 percent.
“One month dose not make a trend,” said GCB gaming analyst Mike Lawton. “There was one less weekend this year as compared with last year. Wendover is still up for the fiscal year. This may well be a bump in the road.”
Both March and February were up months for the boarder town, preceded by a down January.
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“Win” is a gross figure, with no operating costs or other expenses deducted. And it’s casino revenue only _ separate from hotel, restaurant or bar revenues generated by the resorts.
While win indicates a casino market’s profitability another statistic “play” is an indicator of how casino workers are fairing. With some casino workers dependent on tips for up to half of their total income, play, the amount of money wagered by gamblers is a good indicator of how much casino workers received in tips and how many gamblers are actually in the casino.
Slot win in wendover was down 3.3 percent to $10.7 million. Slot play was up very marginally at 0.2 percent. Slot hold declined from 5.56 percent to 5.37 percent. On the tables win was down 8.1 percent to $3 million. Play was down 3.9 percent to $14 million. Hold declined from 22.27 to 21.3 percent.
In the balance of Elko County total gaming win was up 1.14 percent to $8.8 million. April result pushed gaming win for the fiscal year to date back to the black albeit slightly by 0.19 percent.
Elko slot win was up 2.5 percent to $7.9 million. Play was down 8.3 percent. The difference was in hold which increased from 6.8 percent to a whopping 7.69 percent. On the tables win fell 7.58 percent to $876,000. Hold was up from 23.7 percent to 24.78 percent.
In the rest of the state, Nevada’s casinos returned to their winning ways in April, posting a statewide total win of $855.7 million for a 6.2 percent gain over April 2011, the Gaming Control Board reported today.
Clark County overall was up 8.9 percent in April to $743.7 million while the rest of the state did not fare as well. Washoe County was down 15.5 percent, South Lake Tahoe was down 4.4 percent and Elko County was down 2.3 percent.
One reason for the positive overall report was technical in nature, however. Because March ended on a Saturday, some of the slot machine revenue from that day did not get tallied until the following month, skewing the April totals.
But the win, coming after a double-digit decline in March, is the sixth positive month out of the past seven and is welcome news, said Lawton.
“March was kind of a bump in the road,” he said. “(We) got back on track this month. Next month might be a little bit different, we’ve got a really tough comp for May.”
For the fiscal year from July 1, 2011 to April 30, statewide gaming win is up 2.5 percent.
All major Clark County markets posted gains in April, including the Strip, up 7.5 percent; downtown Las Vegas, up a strong 25 percent; and North Las Vegas, up an impressive 42.3 percent.
North Las Vegas was affected by the additional slot revenue counted from March, while downtown Las Vegas was up due in part to the reopening of the Plaza Hotel and Casino after an extensive renovation.
Downtown Las Vegas is up 4.5 percent fiscal year to date, a positive sign for a market that has not had a positive fiscal year since 2005, Lawton said.
The Strip win came despite a modest 2.9 percent gain on table games. Baccarat was up nearly 16 percent to $65.7 million, but twenty-one was down 5.2 percent to $58.8 million. The Strip did much better with slot machine revenues, which were up 12.1 percent to $249 million.
Again, the extra revenue reported from March was a factor in the Strip slot revenue number.
Lawton said when a monthly report has such a reporting anomaly it is better to look at the fiscal year overall. The combined Las Vegas local markets, for example, are up 5.1 percent for the calendar year to date, he said.
“So they are definitely moving in the right direction,” Lawton said.
May will be a tougher month for the industry to post a win, due in part to the big gains posted in May 2011 when both the statewide and Strip wins were up by double digits, he said.
But there were some big events in Las Vegas in May, so, “you never know,” he said.
“We’ll take the slot anomaly and we’ll deal with it next month,” Lawton said.
