March 2010 Gaming report for Nevada

So baccarat is still saving the strip. The strip went up $11M across the board. Baccarat went up $19M and everything else dropped $8M.


But it teaches me to make predictions. I was wrong about Baccarat hitting it's traditional dip in March. It defied history and hit a record return (for a March). I don't know what the drop was yet.

* Blackjack went up by $2 million over March of last year. A trend or a blip?

* Slots went up 0.09% after 20 months of decline. In cash that is about $1/4 million. There was big play on $100 machines. I was wrong about the slots as well as I thought they would continue to decline.

* Craps and roulette nosedived by 33%.


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Statewide casino win decreases slightly during the month
By Cy Ryan (contact)
Published Tuesday, May 11, 2010 | 8:02 a.m.

CARSON CITY � Casinos along the Las Vegas Strip posted their fourth increased win in the past five months in March, buoyed by strong performances in Baccarat and sports betting with the college basketball tournament.

Casinos in downtown Las Vegas, however, registered their 22nd consecutive month of declining gaming win. But casinos in Laughlin ended 27 straight months of lowered win, recording a 2.4 percent increase in March.

The state Gaming Control Board reported today that casinos statewide won $912.1 million in March, computed before business expenses and taxes. That was a 0.66 percent decline from the same month of a year ago.

Other gaming areas in Clark County reported a decreased win compared to March 2009.

The Strip accounts for more than 50 percent of the stateâ�冱 gaming win. Strip casinos posted $467 million in, up 2.4 percent. For the first three months of the year, the gaming win on the Strip increased by 9.8 percent.

For the 11st consecutive month, the 17 casinos that have Baccarat reported an increase, up to $52.7 million.

Sports betting jumped 527.5 percent to $7.6 million. Players lost $12.1 million in basketball during the time of the NCAA basketball tournament.

Frank Streshley, chief of tax and licensing for the board, said the high-end play is coming back on the Strip, and convention business has been strong.

â�弩e hit the bottom and are slowly climbing out,â�� he said.

He said the locals markets in Clark County will lag behind the Strip. He said as Strip casinos hire more workers, those employees will play in the locals markets.

After 20 consecutive months of decline, the win in slot machines on the Strip registered a small 0.09 percent increase. The biggest gains were recorded in the penny slots, up 10.3 percent, and the $100 machines, an increase of 113.4 percent.

Strip casinos reported a 1.8 percent increase in win on Blackjack tables but registered 33 percent declines both in craps and roulette.

The board reported downtown Las Vegas casinos won $49.3 million, off 10.6 percent from March 2009. North Las Vegas casinos had a $28.1 million win, down 11.7 percent. The Boulder Strip posted a 4.9 percent decline on gross win of $75.5 million. Mesquite casinos dropped 3.4 percent to $11.9 million and the balance of Clark County reported a 5.2 percent drop to $94.5 million.

Laughlin casinos won $52.7 million, up 2.4 percent with slot win increasing by 2.9 percent and table win falling 0.4 percent.

After 31 months of declines, Washoe County casinos registered their second straight increased win, up 1.5 percent in March. After 19 consecutive months of declining revenues, South Lake Tahoe casinos registered a 7.5 percent increase.

Casinos in Elko County fell by 5 percent in gaming win but Carson Valley casinos posted a 2.2 percent increase.

The board reported the state collected $79.9 million, or an increase of 6.8 percent, based on the gaming win in March. Part of that is due to marker repayment, Streshley said.

For the strip, table games are up 5.70% in March over the previous year, with table revenues of 202,090,000. Slot revenue is flat (growth of 0.11%) year over year. 21 is also flat at a 1.81% growth year over year sthough I believe it has had its best month in a while. Baccarat led the charge with a 58.95% growth over last year, meaning (to me) that the whales from overseas are still being flown in and are playing in Vegas. But Mini-Bacarrat is also up 43%. Craps and Roulette suffered significant losses in revenue year over year for March, off about 1/3rd.

So, overall, I think it was a decent month for the strip, with Baccarat whales leading the way, but the rest of the sector being flat compared to a year ago.

Quote: pacomartin

Craps and roulette nosedived by 33%.

That seems quite likely to be due to the fact that I didn't make it to Vegas in March. :P

You have better access to details than I do. I'm not sure how since they haven't posted the detailed Gaming Revenue sheet yet.

I predicted far worse. I thought the Baccarat players would stay away as they did in March in past years. I also expected slots to keep dropping.

Down 33%,

Wow. Very interesting and entertaining.

Frank,

The gaming sheets were available a few hours ago at the Gaming Commission's web site. Do you have a different source?

So, March represents the second month in the row where the year over year "Money In" (revenue / win%) has grown for 21 (3.61% in March) and all other Table Games (14.49 in March).

Roulette's loss is simply due to win% being 13.81% this year vs 26.58% a year ago. "Money in" for roulette actually grew 28.9% year-over-year while the money in for Craps was flat at -.15% YoY. Bacarrat is up 35% year over year. For all games, money in is up 14.5% year over year.

This is promising.

Quote: Doc

That seems quite likely to be due to the fact that I didn't make it to Vegas in March. :P

I did and my contribution to craps should have helped.

I like how 1 cent slot machines make more money then even baccarat.

Quote: gambler

I like how 1 cent slot machines make more money then even baccarat.

To refine what I said earlier, baccarat went up $19,556,000 for March, and the rest of the pit went down -$8,609,000. I was expecting it to be much worse, but blackjack had a mini surge, and slots held their own. The other losses were in craps and roulette.


Baccarat went up this March relative to March a year ago. However, it is still a relatively weak month for Baccarat. It was beaten by both penny slots, and blackjack (for the first time 9 months).

I guess I was wrong about MGM-Mirage. They lost 5% in total revenue, and 25% in operating income (not including the ARIA debacle). Every single property went down in operating income, and only Monte Carlo had slightly higher total revenue. I thought that part of that would show up in the gaming numbers, but since the gaming revenue held up for the last 3 months, it does look like they lost all that money in non-gaming revenue.

Latest graphs include March

The way your bottom chart is set I find a little deceiving.

First, without looking at the axis, it looks like baccarat has more than twice the revenue as slots. However, upon checking the dual axis, baccarat is at about $1.15B, and slots about $3.15B. Granted your way shows the most detail for each category, but is misleading in terms of comparing the two to each other.

Second, starting both axis above zero make the dips look more dire than they really were. For example, it looks like baccarat revenue is up about 4x since the low point about Apr 2009. It actually is up about 17% only.

Just my two cents.

Although I do understand your argument, I have tried changing the axes and most of the page is blank space. With the graph with the slot revenue I elected to do an offset of $2 billion rather scaling the data.

My counter-argument is that I am principally interested in showing change in dollars (not change in percent).

I understand your argument too. Let's leave it at that.

Quote: Wizard

I understand your argument too. Let's leave it at that.

Maybe other people in the forum have an opinion.

Which graph do you think is clearer?
The top one maintains scale, with a range from zero to $3.5 billion.
The bottom one highlights the change more easily with a scale of less than $1 billion.

Your first graph is on the same scale and makes more sense. The second graph looks misleading but is able to show changes better since the ranges are representing the top and bottom limits of each games' action.

In my opinion, the upper graph makes the lower graph look like an exaggeration, perhaps even an unintentional misrepresentation. I have seen plenty of graphical presentations that show the data exactly accurately and lead people to the completely wrong impression. In this case, I think the impression one gets from the lower graph is that baccarat has completely overtaken slots in the recent past and now dominates. Perhaps that is the impression that is desired. But the upper graph shows that baccarat is still running a distant second to slots. Although it may now be the highest individual table game, it still plays a minority role in the table game scene, if I understand your data.

Well we have votes for deceptive and exaggeration, so I think I will lose the 2nd graph with the double axes.

The March 2010 data for slots shows a very very slight improvement, after 20 months of constant drops. I just thought that was easier to see in the 2nd graph.

I agree completely that changes are easier to see in the lower graph. I meant to convey that it is the impression that graph leaves that troubles me. While I do not believe it is your intent to deceive, I have seen far too many cases where I really think the presenter did want the viewer to believe something that was not true, even though the graph was completely accurate. One example that really annoyed me was a corporate annual report that graphed the historical trend of a positive parameter of interest (can't remember now just what it was). The graph presented the parameter value vs. year and showed a strong upward trend. It was only after reading the very fine print that one could notice that the most recent year was on the left, with time progressing backward to the right. The graph actually reported a continuing decrease in this important parameter but left casual viewers with the impression that things continued to improve. I truly believe that "deception" was the intent of the report preparers.

Not only is the second graph make it look like Bacarat is doing better than slots, it took me several looks before I realized that the LEFT scale was Bacarat, and the right scale was for slots. Why? Because the key tag 'Billions Slots/Bacarat' was situated near the highest point in the graph, thought it was for THAT graph.

I much perfer the more realistic view showed in the first graph.

However: I think it would be cleaner if the months were at the bottom. Also, get a picture of a real Bacarat table. The screen shot from an online casino (or practice table) looks cheezy.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

However: I think it would be cleaner if the months were at the bottom. Also, get a picture of a real Bacarat table. The screen shot from an online casino (or practice table) looks cheezy.

I shifted the dates to the top because the gridlines were more visible, plus it was easier to see that slots did not start to go down in earnest until July of 2008. That was fully 9 months after blackjack started collapsing. Some combination of feelings made people lay off blackjack way before the other games. People may have just been more conscious of spending money than they are when they slowly feed a slot machine. But since people didn't leave craps and roulette (which could have much higher HA than 6:5 blackjack) there was obviously some lack of loyalty to blackjack. Either that or it is simply the table game of choice for people who don't otherwise play table games.

I think this is the best that I can do.