Atlantic City Casino Revenue Down 6.5% To $340.3m In July 2011

Atlantic City casinos posted yet another disappointing set of monthly revenue results, extending the beleaguered resort’s losing streak to 35 straight months of decline dating back to September 2008.
Even a month containing five weekends and the Fourth of July celebrations failed to pack out the casinos despite the City itself being crowded with thousands of vacationers for the festivities.
In total, July’s results saw Atlantic City collect $340.3 million in revenue from its 11 casinos representing a 6.5% drop from a year earlier. Breaking the figures down further, slot machine revenue decreased 3% to $245.4 million while table game fell 14.5% to $94.9 million.
Analysing the data, Tropicana Casino CEO Tony Rodio took encouragement from a diminishing decrease in slot revenue for a second month in a row and commented:
“The market is still feeling the effects of table games in Pennsylvania [introduced a year ago]…The number that I think is most important is the slot win, which is a more normalized metric of how we’re doing.”
Nevertheless, despite the positive slant expressed by Tony Rodio the lacklustre revenue figures sank all across the board with only Harrah’s Resort bucking the trend and posting a 1% increase in July.
Gambling revenue in the USA’ second-biggest casino market has now fallen 6.9% during the first seven months of 2011 compared to a year earlier. Putting the gambling resort’s decline into context, Atlantic City has now seen its revenue plummet to $3.57 billion in 2010 from its 2006 peak of $5.2 billion and as Spectrum Gaming Group predicts:
“Our projection of $3.1 billion in gaming revenue for Atlantic City in 2011 is down 40.8 percent, or a staggering $2.13 billion, from its historical peak year of 2006.”
One piece of good news on the horizon, however, is the scheduled opening next May of the $2.4 billion Revel casino, which it is hoped will help reverse Atlantic City’s downward trend.