Gaming win flat in April

Gaming licensees reported basically flat win numbers for April at $806 million.

While that is a half percent down from the same month of 2010, Gaming Control Board analyst Mike Lawton said part of the reason is the calendar for the month. April ended on a Saturday, which means the slot winnings for that weekend weren't reported until May 1. If the estimated $30 million in win from Friday and Saturday had been added to April, the win would have been up about 3 percent, he said.

The Carson Valley Area, which includes valley portions of Douglas County, reported a 3.33 percent drop in win to $8.34 million, a decrease of $288,000 from a year ago. Lawton said it was a tough comparison since April 2010 was up 5.3 percent.

Game and table win was the culprit this year, recording a 22.3 percent decrease compared to the previous April. Almost all of that was on the 21 tables where the hold percentage decreased from 24.6 percent to 16.5 percent.

Stateline casinos recorded their first increase since August 2010, up 15 percent to $14.28 million. In South Shore's case, the month was an easy comparison since last April saw a 21 percent decrease. The big difference was a 320 percent increase in the "other games" category which, in Stateline's case, means Baccarat and mini-baccarat. Total win in that category was $2.1 million for the month.

North Lake Tahoe casinos were up 22.74 percent to $1.9 million in April. That matches the 22 percent increase in slot coin in for the casinos there.

The sports pool numbers were also healthy at North Shore, rising 116 percent. Where sports books lost on basketball last year, they won this year.

Churchill County saw a 6.73 percent increase in total gaming win. The 10 nonrestricted gaming locations there raked in $1.73 million in April.

Just $54,000 of that comes from games play, which was up significantly - 14.3 percent over last year.

The vast majority of Churchill gaming win is from slot play.

Elko County reported a 4.9 percent increase in total win to $22.98 million for the month.

Statewide, game and table win was up 2.5 percent to $261.3 million. That matches the increase table games have reported for the 10 months of this fiscal year.

Slot win was down 2.1 percent - again because of the calendar - to $534.7 million. But coin in, the amount wagered, was up nearly $41 million to $9.1 billion.

Lawton said that is the first increase in coin in this fiscal year.

Slot volume on the Las Vegas Strip was up $30 million in April. Lawton said that is the first time the Strip has reported two consecutive months of increases since July/August 2007.

"We're all waiting for that mass market play to come back and that's a very good sign," said Lawton.

Win on the Las Vegas Strip was down just a hair over 1 percent at $427.5 million. Washoe County win was off two-thirds of a percent to $64.1 million.