Nevada Casinos Fail To Collect $128 Million From Gamblers In Fiscal Year 2012A Closer Look At Some Interesting Numbers From The Gaming Abstract |
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The Nevada Gaming Control Board recently released its annual Gaming Abstract for fiscal year 2012, and in it contained some interesting figures from the Silver State’s casinos.
The state’s top-earning casinos (ones with revenues of more than $1 million) reported $128.1 million in gaming “bad debt expense”. In other words, the amount gamblers didn’t repay the casinos after taking out a marker. The figure marks a slight decrease from 2011.
Dr. David Schwartz, director of the Center of Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, wrote in a Mar. 2012 analysis on Nevada casino bad debt expenses:
“Most major Nevada casinos rely on credit play for a significant share of their gaming revenues. Casinos release no direct information about the amounts of credit they grant, but the [Abstract] does include […] bad debt under casino expenses. It’s possible, therefore, to get an idea of what portion of markers are being written off as unpayable, which can in turn give an impression of how good a job the gaming industry is doing of analyzing credit risk.”
According to 2011 reporting by the Las Vegas Sun, the Nevada court system processes about 100 “marker cases” each week. Casinos do try to collect.
In addition to credit extension to entice gamblers, casino departments gave out $2.2 billion in comps in FY 2012. They also reported $248 million in “preferred guest expenses”.
Moving on from gamblers welching; the Gaming Abstract reported that “coin operated devices”, such as slot machines, brought in revenues of about $6.8 billion, while poker and pan about $160.9 million. Poker, a unique game in which the house takes a percentage of the pot for a rake, represents less than two percent of gaming revenues in the state.
These days, Nevada casinos have about 800 poker tables during any given month, according to research from UNLV. Though, during the summer that number grows thanks to the WSOP.
The UNLV report states that, “in general, poker has, since 2006, become steadily less profitable for Nevada casinos.” It’s worth noting that the Silver State is close to kicking off an intrastate online poker industry, which could lead to more live tables. Games could begin by the spring, though it’s unclear which company would be first to the market.
The poker and pan figure is a decline from $162.7 million in FY 2011, which actually had less locations (256) reporting more than $1 million in revenue than in FY 2012 (265).
Some think that Nevada’s online gaming industry might hurt visitation numbers to the brick-and-mortar casinos. Others think it will help drive turnout, thanks to a synergy between the online and live settings. An average of 82.84 percent of hotel rooms were occupied for FY 2012 — and there are more than four million hotel rooms in the state. The hope going forward is that those numbers increase, not drop, with web gaming in the equation.
To make the $10-billion-a-year gambling industry go, Nevada casinos collectively employed a six-figure workforce. Nevada’s population is about 2.7 million.
Follow Brian Pempus on Twitter — @brianpempus
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