Atlantic City casinos see a small recovery, but more losses coming

The East Coast’s major gambling town is still struggling to fight off COVID-19

Based on what they saw last year, Atlantic City’s casinos can’t complain too much about their performance last month. Overall, they reported gross gaming revenue that was just off by 8% compared to October of last year. However, this was still worse than what was seen in September, when the number should have been going up, not down. October saw gaming revenue of $186.1 million, while September produced just over $190 million.

Slots were, surprisingly, the biggest loser in October. Typically, these are the bread and butter for casinos, but they only accounted for $132.85 million of the revenue, a 10% year-on-year drop. Table games gave $53.25 million for a decrease of 2.8%. Year to date, slot revenue is off by about 45% to $887.9 million, while table game revenue is down 48.2% to $331 million. Overall, the year-to-date decline is about 46% compared to the same period last year.

Those figures are for the physical gambling facilities in the state, but New Jersey picked up a nice boost from its online gambling segment. Online casinos and sportsbooks contributed $118 million combined, bringing the month’s final numbers to about $304.1 million for a year-on-year increase of 14.2%. However, year to date, the total figure is still off by about 22.7% at $2.11 billion.

Things are probably going to drop again, too. New Jersey is going back on COVID-19 lockdown, to a certain degree, and the state’s casinos are having to pull back their operations. A number of casino employees have already been let go as the coronavirus pandemic lingers, and more cuts are most likely coming.