Nevada had gone on a nice run, but as they say, all good things must come to an end. And so it did for Nevada in August, as the state’s five month gaming revenue winning streak came to an end.
That is not to say that Nevada actually lost money from gambling. No, that would be insane. August marked the first month since February that total gaming “win,” as it is called, declined from the previous month. For August, Nevada casinos brought in $920,292,000 in total gaming revenue, a 3.66 percent drop from July. Before August, Nevada had experienced five straight months of growth. February was the last month in which total gaming win fell; the drop was 13.71 percent that month.
Looking at the numbers breakdown, for each individual game, two figures stands out: baccarat and mini-baccarat. Baccarat made up a sizable chunk of the total gaming win, $169,587,000, but that was a decline of 12.41 percent from July. Mini-baccarat was a small portion of the overall total, but interestingly, casinos actually lost money, $4,014,000, on the game, a staggering 147.92 percent change to the negative from the previous month.
According to Howard Stutz of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the baccarat decline, which drove the overall gaming win decline, is not really as big of a deal as it might appear. He quoted Stifel Nicolaus Capital Markets gaming analyst Steve Wieczynski as saying, “We would caution investors from reading too much into the headline, as the figure was predominantly driven by a decline in baccarat hold.”
Hold, as Stutz explains, is “the amount kept by casinos after all wagers.” Last August, a tremendous month for Nevada, the hold percentage was 18.92 percent. This year, it is down to 15.92 percent, which, in conjunction with the massive chunk of change baccarat brings in, makes a big difference. Baccarat betting is also up 10.9 percent from the beginning of the year.
The evidence of baccarat’s influence on the numbers was also apparent last year. In his article, Stutz recalls that in 2013, gaming win for Strip casinos was up 5 percent and according to Deutsche Bank gaming analyst Carlo Santarelli “was entirely baccarat driven and largely predicated on high baccarat hold.”
Another statistic that indicates people should not fret over the decrease in gaming win is that slot machine win was up 5.87 percent, a sign that things are just fine.
What was not fine was online poker. Reported as “interactive poker” in the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s Gaming Revenue Report, online poker win was just $742,000 for the month of August, down from 958,000 in July, a staggering 22.5 percent decline.
There are only two online poker rooms of any real import in Nevada: WSOP.com and Ultimate Poker. Neither are particularly large. WSOP.com is the market leader with a seven-day average of 100 cash game players according to PokerScout.com. Ultimate Poker, though it was the first regulated online poker room to launch in the United States, comes in at just 60 cash game players. South Point Casino’s Real Gaming is essentially a non-player to this point.