Nevada casino sportsbooks hit their baseball betting revenue out of the park in the month of June, according to official reports.
Figures released Thursday by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) show statewide casino gaming revenue of $895.4m in the month of June. The figure is up less than 1% from the same month last year but down more than $100m from May 2017’s result. Revenue at Las Vegas Strip casinos was up 1.7% to $497m.
June marks the end of Nevada’s most recent fiscal year, during which the annual gaming revenue figure was up nearly 3% to over $11.4b. The state’s all-time peak came in those heady pre-recession days of 2007, when gaming revenue hit $12.5b.
June’s slots revenue was up nearly 1% to $600.2m, while total Games & Tables revenue rose by a similarly small margin to $295.2m. Blackjack led the table chart with $85.3m (+2.1%), easily outpacing runner-up baccarat, which dipped 13.2% to $66.7m. Craps revenue gained 1.3% to $32.5m while roulette slipped less than 1% to $25.4m.
Baccarat may have been soundly beaten in June, but the game just managed to eclipse blackjack on the fiscal year front. Baccarat revenue dipped 2.9% to $1.22b in the 12 months ending June 30, while blackjack was up 11% to $1.2b.
Activity surrounding the 2017 World Series of Poker gave the state’s poker tables a boost in June, as total card game revenue – which includes an unspecified contribution from the state’s lone online poker site – was up 3.35% to $16.7m. The poker numbers were essentially flat at $117.4m for the most recent fiscal year.
The state’s sportsbooks more than doubled their June 2016 revenue total, almost entirely due to baseball. Total betting revenue amounted to just under $15.9m, up 101.6% year-on-year. For the fiscal year, Nevada sportsbooks earned $228.6m, up 3.5% year-on-year.
Baseball accounted for nearly $14.9m – a new monthly record – of June’s betting total, a year-on-year improvement of 255.4% as June saw a number of betting favorites come up short against underdogs. The rest of the betting column was flushed out by the ‘other’ sports category, which fell nearly 73% to $749k, while parlay cards jumped 241% to $236k. The state’s pari-mutuel racebooks were roughly flat at $3.5m.
