Even A.C. is hurting

Update - February was really down also. Actually, the slight up-tick is less than an extra days revenue should have brought. With the leap year the average day to day for the year-over-year should be up approximately 3.57% but the casinos were only up 1.5%, so they really were down year-over-year not up. The up is just business spin.


The recession is taking its toll everywhere. The first thing people are cutting are the extras - keeping what they have and what they have access available for life's necessities. This is evident in an article from today's Record discussing that every A.C. casino is down in year-over-year revenue for the month of March. There was a very slight uptick in February which is believed in part due to leap year. But revenue is down for March on average 10% - some doing much worse than others. From the article -

The figures released by the state Casino Control Commission show that the gambling halls took in $395 million, down 9.9 percent from March 2007. Every casino in the city reported a decline last month.

The casinos won $277.3 million at the slot machines, down 11.2 percent, while table games revenue was $117.7 million, down 6.6 percent.

The Tropicana Casino and Resort, struggling to recover from a difficult year in which its former owners lost their casino license and customers abandoned the place in droves, had the worst month in March with a 20.1 percent decline.

Even the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa, which regularly dominates in revenue, saw its take decrease by 13.4 percent. Bally's Atlantic City fared even worse, down 13.5 percent.

Other big losers were Resorts Atlantic City (13.3 percent); the Showboat Casino Hotel (12.2 percent), and Caesars Atlantic City (9.2 percent.)

...Many casino executives and industry analysts expect Atlantic City's slump to continue at least through the third quarter of this year.

Casino are a big draw for southern NJ. They are also a great source of high paying regional jobs. Unfortunately, job losses will be following the revenue losses. If the number of job losses ends up being substantial this will bring down property levels as people will sell, short sell, walk away or face foreclosures. People have been cash-out refinancing and HELOCing during the good times - so when tough times hit there may not be much to fall back on.

Problems with the gaming industry will reverberate throughout the region. This may hurt our state hard. Hopefully this will not be a sign of things to come for the summer months. It will probably reduce some of the seasonal summer workers before really impacting the year-round workers.