Atlantic City Casino Revenue Down 6% To $276m In September

Atlantic City has released its gambling results for September revealing a 6.3% decline in casino revenue to $276 million, compared with $295 million for the same month last year. Overall, Atlantic City’s 12 casinos saw slots revenue fall by 3.2% to $198.4 million, while table games were down by 13.6% to $77.6 million during the month.
Worryingly, in September only the Golden Nugget, which underwent a $150 million renovation last year, saw its revenue rise, on this occasion by 8% to $11.5 million. All the others suffered revenue declines with perhaps the greatest disappointment being the $2.4 billion mega-casino Revel, which was opened in April to huge fanfare and was being touted as the catalyst for Atlantic City’s gambling market in decline since 2007. However, Revel’s revenue declined 15.7% in September to $16.9 million and commenting on the unimpressive figure,  Revel CEO Kevin DeSanctis said:
“We clearly have some things we need to improve. We have to get much better in gaining market share. We’re just not doing it yet.”
Amongst those issues contributing to Revel’s slow start to get off the ground are a myriad of factors, including the casino’s no-smoking policy, as well as high hotel room prices and expensively priced restaurants and buffet.
Overall, Borgata’s revenue was down 5.9% to $55.3 million; Tropicana Casino down 29% to $21.5 million; Bally’s Atlantic City down 22.6% to $24.5 million; Trump Plaza down 18.8% to $8.9 million; The Showboat down 15.3% to $19.4 million; Harrah’s Resort down 12.9% to $32.7 million; Resorts Casino down 8.5% to $11.9 million; Trump Taj Mahal down 8.3% to $27.9 million; Caesars Atlantic City down 7.2% to $33.3 million; and the Atlantic Club Casino down 1.9% to $11.8 million.
For the first nine months 2012, gambling revenue from Atlantic City’s casino industry is now down 5% to $2.4 billion, with Slot winnings declining by 3% and table games revenue falling 10%. By contrast, in 2006 Atlantic City reached its peak of $5.2 billion in casino revenue, but by 2010 that figure had fallen to $3.6 billion, and last year dropped to $3.3 billion.