Atlantic City – 2016 a good year for internet gambling
News on 13 Jan 2017
News on 13 Jan 2017
The New Jersey regulator released the 2016 final performance figures for Atlantic City gambling Thursday, showing that online gambling operations assisted the land casinos to post their first revenue increase since 2006.
Online gambling revenues over the year came in at $197 million – a 32 percent year-on-year increase.
The 7 land casinos still active in Atlantic City won $2.6 billion from gamblers in 2016, an increase of 1.5 percent from a year earlier.
In related news, Thursday also saw the release of full year figures by the Nevada Gaming Control Board regulator.
The Associated Press news agency reports that Nevada’s biggest casinos combined to turn a profit in fiscal 2016 for the first time in eight years, but it wasn’t due to gambling winnings…room rentals and fees helped resorts generate income of almost $979 million from total revenues of $25.2 billion in the year ended last June 30.
That compared with a net loss of almost $662 million on revenues of $24.6 billion a year earlier.
Casinos across the state recorded net income for the first time since fiscal 2008, board analyst Michael Lawton said, but the trend continues to tilt away from gambling and toward restaurant, retail, entertainment and room rental business.
The revenue figure came in just 0.1 percent below the record $25.3 billion in total recorded in fiscal 2007, Lawton added.
McCarran International Airport was on pace in December to top the record 45 million passengers handled in 2015. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported a record number of tourists, 42.9 million, in 2016.
Lawton said the last time gambling revenues accounted for half the profit on the Strip was in the 1997-98 fiscal year. This year, gambling revenues dropped to 34.2 percent of the total, the lowest percentage ever and a decrease from 34.9 percent last year. Gambling revenue in 1990, by comparison, made up about 58 percent of the total.
Analysts said that while Las Vegas Strip casinos made about 2 percent more money in fiscal 2016 than they did in 2015, gambling revenues were up less than a quarter of a percent.
Room revenues, by comparison, grew almost 8 percent, and food revenues grew almost 3 percent, he said.
