Nevada casino revenue fell in August, as a strong slots showing wasn’t enough to overcome across the board declines in table game performance.
According to figures released Wednesday by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, statewide gaming revenue fell 1.4% to $908.2m in August, the third straight month of negative numbers. Casinos on the Las Vegas Strip let the decline, falling 4.7% to $527.4m. Through the first eight months of 2015, statewide revenue is up less than 1% while Strip revenue is down 1.9%.
Statewide slots win was up nearly 10% to $575.6m on a 6.58% hold. But table games were almost universally in the red, led by baccarat, which fell 25.1% to $127m despite a 14.3% hold. The situation was similarly bleak at the other top table earners, with blackjack down 15.5% to $87m, craps off 10.8% to $28.1m and roulette falling 17.7% to $25.5m.
Mini-baccarat broke the downward trend by rising a hefty 304% to $8.2m, although the improvement was based on comparison with a spectacularly bad August 2014, in which mini-baccarat reported a net loss of $4m on a negative 3.3% hold.
The rest of the table games finished as follows: pai gow poker ($7.5m, -22.7%), let it ride ($3m, -5.6%), keno ($2.3m, -7%), pai gow ($1.2m, +33.4%) and bingo reported a net loss of $216k, down 450% year-on-year. Other games and tables were up 10.1% to $14.4m, while combined land-based and online poker revenue slipped 5.5% to $8.5m.
Nevada sportsbooks had an off month, falling 58.1% to $4.76m. Baseball was the dominant vertical, rising 8.3% to $3.6m, while college football revenue slumped 86% to $1.4m. Lazy basketball bettors somehow summoned enough energy to finally walk down to the bookies and cash in $526k worth of winning tickets and the state’s pari-mutuel race betting revenue fell 4% to $4.4m.
