Nevada casinos closed out their fiscal year in fine fashion as baccarat gave a boost to June’s gaming revenue total.
Figures released Friday by the Nevada Gaming Control Board show statewide gaming revenue of $887.4m in June, a 6.8% gain from the same month last year. Las Vegas Strip casinos performed even better, rising 9.7% to $489m.
June’s gains were enough to push the 2016 fiscal year revenue total to $11.1b, up around 1% from fiscal 2015, which was itself down 1.5% from fiscal 2014’s total. However, the state still has a long way to go to surpass its all-time peak of $12.5b in 2007.
June’s gains were aided by a nearly one-third rise in baccarat revenue, although it wasn’t enough to unseat blackjack as the month’s top table earner, underscoring exactly how puny June 2015’s baccarat revenue had been. Blackjack revenue rose 2.5% to $83.4m while baccarat came in just under $77m.
Slots had a good month, rising 7% to $594.7m, while the rest of the table games finished as follows: craps ($32.1m, +26.4%), roulette ($25.6m, +0.5%), three-card poker ($12m, +6%), pai gow poker ($9.3m, +6.5%), mini-baccarat ($5.2m, -31.6%), let it ride ($2.8m, -5%) and keno ($2.4m, -3.7%) while bingo generated a net loss of $122k.
Spillover from the 2016 World Series of Poker helped push June’s poker revenue to $16.1m, nearly twice the sum generated in May, although the figure was only up 1.9% from the same month last year.
The state’s licensed sportsbooks had a rough month, as revenue tumbled 47.3% to $7.8m thanks to an abysmal 2.62% hold. On the plus side, this was better than May’s $5.9m total, and the books maintained their 35-month streak of making money, having not posted a net losing month since July 2013.
Nearly every sports category was in negative territory in June, with baseball falling 56% to $4.2m, basketball down 70% to $1.3m and parlay cards down 11.7% to just $69k. Even the racing book was down 16% to $3.4m. Only the ‘other’ category showed a gain, as Euro 2016 hype pushed the total up 154% to $2.7m.
