Atlantic City casino revenue suffered a dip in May but defenders say the damn Julian calendar is to blame.
Numbers released on Tuesday by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement showed AC’s eight casinos earning brick-and-mortar gaming revenue of $203.3m, a 2.5% decline from the same month last year. However, counting the $16.5m earned by the state’s licensed online gambling operators last month, the overall gaming revenue decline shrinks to a mere 0.6%.
Furthermore, the month of May had the standard four Fridays and four Saturdays, whereas that freakshow May 2015 had five of each, and everybody knows that there are more tumbleweeds rolling through AC’s casinos than people on weekdays, so apples v. oranges, people.
Anyway, the revenue decline was purely the fault of AC’s slot machines, which declined 4.9% to $149.3m, while table game revenue rose 4.5% to just under $54m. For the year-to-date, brick-and-mortar revenue is up 1.6% to $954.2m.
As ever, the Borgata ruled the brick-and-mortar charts with $61m in May, up 16.9% from the same month last year. The Borgata was one of only two casinos that were in positive territory for the month, joined by Bally’s, which barely qualified by rising 0.2% to $18.2m.
Runner-up Harrah’s earned less than half ($29.5m, -11.5%) the Borgata’s take while the Tropicana fell 3.9% to $23.9m, but that was a sufficiently small decline to relegate Caesars ($23.8m, -14.1%) to fourth place.
Closing out the loser parade was the Golden Nugget ($19.4m, -8.4%), the Trump Taj Mahal ($18.4m, -18.2%) and Resorts brought up the rear with $14.1m (-1.3%).
