Gaming win still up for January, February

Nevada casinos saw their total win decrease 4.5 percent in February but Gaming Control analyst Mike Lawton said it’s explainable.

He pointed out last February was leap year with one more day than this February. But the biggest difference was Chinese New Year was in February last year but completely in January this year.

He said those two factors account for 3.4 percent of the decline to $945.6 million in total win for the month.

Lawton said it makes more sense to combine January and February of this year since January’s win was up 12 percent, recording only the second win total more than $1 billion in the fiscal year.

When the two months are combined, Lawton said win is up 3.5 percent compared to the same two months of last year.

In addition to the leap year and Chinese New Year effect, he said Northern Nevada casinos suffered from extended bad weather that kept a significant number of tourists from getting to casinos in Reno, the Tahoe Basin and Carson City. He said the delays and road closures on U.S. 50 and I-80 didn’t help.

The Carson Valley area, which includes valley portions of Douglas County as well as the capital, reported $7.9 million in gaming win, down 3.9 percent or $322,000 from a year ago. Lawton said it was a difficult comparison since February 2016 was up 7.6 percent. When January and February are combined, Carson Valley is still down but only by 2.3 percent. Slot win was down 5.9 percent or $461,000. Game and Table win was up more than 32 percent but games make up only a small portion of Carson’s total win.

It was Carson Valley’s second consecutive decrease after four consecutive monthly increases.

South Shore casinos at Lake Tahoe reported $15 million in win, a 6.9 percent or $1.1 million decrease. Largely because of bad weather, the amount wagered on table games was down more than 18 percent. Lawton said it would have been a much worse month except the “other games” category won $1.3 million, a 500 percent increase from a year ago. In small markets like South Shore, “other games” translates to mean Baccarat play.

For January and February combined, the lake is up 1.7 percent so far.

North Shore casinos also suffered from the weather, falling to $2 million, a 3.7 percent or $76,000 decrease. North Shore is down 17.9 percent for the first two months of calendar 2017.

The same was true for the rest of Washoe County, which, overall, was down 6.7 percent to $61.4 million for the month. Lawton said it was a difficult comparison since February 2016 was up 8.6 percent. Weather was the problem in both January and February.

Churchill County reported a 14.2 percent decrease in total gaming win to just $1,527,000 in February. Both slot play and table games win were down double digits with Game and Table just under 20 percent off to $62,000. Churchill has just four locations that offer games play and 10 casinos overall. Slot win was off 14 percent.