Gaming profits trended up last year in 20 out of the 23 states that have commercial casinos, and which provided data. Casinos raked in .5 billion last year, a 1.62 percent increase over the year before, according to a report published by Player’s Advantage, based on data provided by the Center for Gaming Research.
Indian casinos posted $28.5 billion in gross gaming revenue in 2014.
The state with the highest increase was Pennsylvania, which took in $3.17 billion in 2015, a 3.41 percent increase over the year before. That makes the state second only to Nevada, which took in $11.1 billion in 2015.
Louisiana came in third with $2.65 billion, while New Jersey’s revenues fell 6.5 percent to $2.56 billion.
The trend for most gaming states was to increase revenues in 2015. States that did not included New Jersey, Delaware, Illinois, Mississippi, Indiana and West Virginia.
Spending on gaming nationwide tanked somewhat at the start of the Great Recession, but since 2010 have slowly regained former levels.
Players spending increased by 0.6 percent in 2014 over the previous year, but much of that could be attributed to more casinos, according to a study by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government in New York.
In California, where most gaming is concentrated in Indian casinos, saw tax revenues from Indian casinos increase by 3.5 percent in 2015 over 2014.
Director David G. Schwartz of the Center noted that casino operators are constantly adapting to changing conditions and player enthusiasms and now are focused on attracting people who don’t care for slot machines, but get much of their entertainment from mobile devices and video games.
Alex Bumazhny, Fitch Ratings Service’s director of gaming, lodging and leisure told Player’s Advantage that he expects gaming revenues nationwide to remain in a holding pattern or even decline in coming years.
He said millennials are not as interested in casinos as Baby Boomers. Instead they like social gaming, as well as games that imitate slots and table games—although they don’t usually involve real money. Yet. In anticipation that they will someday be able to legally do that, Caesars Entertainment, Scientific Games and IGT offer social games.
Bumazhny told Player’s Advantage: “We suspect some players are staying home and playing these games instead of potentially going to casinos,” Bumazhny says. “Maybe they’ll go to casinos less often or spend less at the casino because they play these games.”
UK based-Technavio, a market-research group, takes a rosier view. It predicts that the U.S. market (commercial and Indian), will grow to $93 billion by 2020.
And Nevada casinos took in about 1 percent more during 2015 than they did the year before, with an $11 billion increase in revenue, the Nevada Gaming Control Board Reported.
Gaming regulators attributed an increase in gaming among Nevada locals as accounting for the slight increase in gaming revenue last year, as the Las Vegas Strip remained mostly flat.
For 2015, casinos on the Strip took in $6.35 billion, which was down slightly from $6.37 billion in 2014. The 0.4 percent decrease in gaming revenue was the second straight year Strip casinos posted a decline after posting increases from 2011 through 2013.
Two Lake Tahoe markets also posted slight decreases in gaming revenue last year, but the state, as a whole, gained by nearly 1 percent. The increase at least partly was helped by a rebound in baccarat winnings in December.
For most of the year, baccarat tables on the Las Vegas Strip reported decreased revenues, as China cracked down on citizen gaming trips and many Asian markets posted economic declines during the year.
Fortunately, baccarat revenue rebounded in December, which helped casinos on the Las Vegas Strip to post an 8.2 percent gain in revenues from December 2014, the Gaming Control Board reported.
Bettors didn’t wager more at the baccarat tables. Instead, they bet less—but lost more, resulting in a windfall for Strip casinos, despite posting an 11 percent decline in baccarat and a 176 percent reduction in mini-baccarat from December 2014.
For the year, Las Vegas Strip casinos generated about 57 percent of all Nevada gaming revenues for 2015, which is down slightly from the 58 percent share posted in 2014.
