Nevada Casinos Face Revenue Slump
Thursday, March 4th, 2010While the industry of online casinos galloped ahead at a rapidly fast pace, things are not going quite so smoothly for the casinos that are based within the state of Nevada. The fiscal year for 2009 was particularly unfortunate for land based casino operations in Nevada. According to numbers released by the Gaming Control Board, there was a total net loss of $6.7 billion among the 260 top online top casinos based in Nevada. That is a drastic loss for an industry that used to being relatively immune to even the most potent and dismal economic recessions.
While you casinos have managed to escape relatively unscathed through this financially disastrous scenario, the same cannot be said for the land based casinos within the heart of Las Vegas and all over the state of Nevada. The only thing that was up in terms of revenue from a financial standpoint was liquor sales. Alcoholic beverages rose in sale amount by 2.5%. In the online casino realm, there is no telling how much people drink when they gamble. But in the clubs along the Las Vegas strip, revenue that is attached to casinos and hotels rooms and restaurants declined significantly.
The president of the Nevada Resort Association described the year 2009 as horrendous for the land based casino gambling industry. Many casino operations have had to have several waves of layoffs in order to cut costs to meet up with the revenue that has been lost. Many businesses are just trying to stay afloat and hope against hope that a recovery against this horrific recession will come sometime in the near future. Before 2009, the last time that the Nevada gaming companies had to report a loss was all the way back in 2003.
