Gaming win down huge at Tahoe, up in Carson

South Shore casinos suffered a huge dip in April’s gaming win, but Carson City saw its first increase after four months of decreases.

South Shore casinos at Stateline reported a 42 percent less win than in April 2013, a decrease of $6.6 million to just $9.1 million. Gaming Control Board analyst Mike Lawton said it was a difficult comparison since those casinos reported a 14.5 percent increase a year ago. Secondly, he said, since March ended on a Sunday last year, that weekend’s collections were all reported in April 2013, boosting that number significantly.

The situation wasn’t helped by the closure of the Horizon’s 539 rooms and 200 slots. That closure also cost 150 people their jobs.

The Carson Valley area, which includes valley portions of Douglas County, reported a 1.5 percent increase this April to just more than $8 million. Although slot win, the area’s primary revenue generator, was down a bit, the game and table win was up 31 percent or $136,000. The sports book win was up 244 percent to $84,000.

Statewide, the total win came in at $854,29 million, a decrease of just more than a quarter percent. That is despite the 39 percent — $90.4 million — increase in the baccarat win, much of it generated by the crowd attending the Manny Pacquiao-Tim Bradley fight.

Without baccarat, the statewide win would have been down more than 3.5 percent.

In Clark County, the Strip was up 3.2 percent. But that was the only reporting area in the county which saw an increase in April.

Churchill County reported a 5.15 percent decrease in the total win to $1,732,000. That came despite a huge 124 percent increase in the games win. But the game and table win generated just $63,000 of that total win and the slot win was down 7.2 percent.

All Washoe County reporting areas were down in April, overall by 2.2 percent to $58.3 million. Reno was down 1.5 percent despite the opening of Siri’s casino in the heart of downtown.

Washoe’s game and table win was actually up by $491,000 but, Lawton said, “slots brought Washoe County down.”

But, he said, Reno actually did well considering it was up against a difficult comparison — a 15.4 percent increase in April, 2013.

North Shore casinos at Tahoe saw a 2.9 percent decrease in April. Visitors have been scarce at North Shore this year because of the weak winter, resulting in a low volume of play.

May collections of the gaming percentage fee came to $47.89 million. That is a 1.4 percent increase over the prior May. But Lawton said with just a month to go in the fiscal year, collections are only up three-quarters of a percent or $4.8 million. That leaves the state $11.4 million or 1.8 percent below the revenue projections made by the Economic Forum and used to build the state budget.