Atlantic City Casinos Down 12% To $228m In April

Atlantic City has just released its casino results for April, revealing a 12.1% drop in revenue to  $228.5 million, compared to $259.9 million for the same month last year. For the first four months of 2013, Atlantic City’s 12 casinos have now won $884.6 million, representing a fall of 12.1% from the same period in 2012.
Breaking April’s figures down further, table games generated 6% less revenue at $66.8 million, while slot machine revenue fell by 14.4% to $161.7 million in April. The only casinos bucking the trend and showing growth during the month was the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel up 37% to $11.3 million, and Caesars Atlantic City up 5.9% to $29.1 million.
Conversely, the biggest decline was reported by Revel, down a massive 40.1% to a mere $8.1 million. In fact, only Trump Plaza (down 32.3% to $6 million) took in less revenue than the $2.4 billion resort in April, but trying to strike an optimistic chord, Revel’s interim chief executive Jeffrey Hartmann, commented:
“Although our April gaming revenues were disappointing, we are launching new initiatives that will drive future growth and reintroducing Revel to the gaming public over the next couple of months..[there are] many new amenities and investments being made at Revel as we seek to broaden our appeal across a variety of demographics and gaming preferences.”
Other fallers during the month of April included Bally’s Atlantic City down 30% to $19 million; The Tropicana Casino down 23% to $20.5 million; Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City down 19.2% to $28 million. Also reporting declines in revenue was the Showboat Casino Hotel down 17% to $16.5 million; Resorts Casino Hotel down 13% to $10 million; the Golden Nugget Atlantic City down 10.7% to $9.3 million; The Borgata Hotel Casino down 1.5 % to $48.9 million, and the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort down 1.3% to $21.7 million.
Commenting on the overall disappointing results for April, Deutsche Bank AG gaming analyst Andrew Zarnett, commented: “For Atlantic City, our view of continued declines into 2013 remains intact as consumers in this market will be negatively impacted by higher taxes and commodity costs and the reduction to discretionary income.”