A lot has been said and posted as to how Atlantic City poker rooms have been faring over the past few years. I decided to take a hard look at the actual numbers, in order to see what is actually happening as opposed to what some people are saying without providing evidence.

I am only looking at the first 7 months - January through July - since those are the only ones that have reports for this year. I will look at August through December as they occur and are reported (usually on the 10th of the following month, according to the website.)

I took a look at the numbers reported to the Casino Control Commission, as posted on their website here:

http://www.state.nj.us/casinos/finan...rev/index.html

I have not looked at the amendments. I am not including Resorts and Hilton, since they no longer have poker rooms. Hilton does currently have 2 poker tables on the main floor, while Resorts has none. I also am not using the numbers from Trump Plaza's trial of the Poker Pro tables, since that is no longer in effect and only lasted a few months.

There are currently 7 poker rooms in Atlantic City: Bally's, Borgata, Caesar's, Harrah's, Showboat, Tropicana, and Trump Taj Mahal.

These numbers are for the gross casino win, and do not reflect expenses or other charges.

I make no conclusions and am not going to editorialize here. I am simply looking at the actual numbers as they have been reported.

One must keep in mind, when looking at numbers like these, that there are many factors that influence them that do not appear in the numbers themselves. BBJs are one obvious one - when they are high in a room, that room does significantly more business.

When a room has a major tournament, that also increases business not only in that room but in neighboring rooms (see Caesar's and Bally's, for example, in March - when Caesar's has the World Series of Poker Circuit events.) Or look at the bump that Harrah's gets when the Borgata has major tournaments.

Weather is also a factor. When extreme, it cuts into business. Casino promotions are another factor.

None of these are included here. I haven't looked at them, or factored them in in any way. I am simply showing the numbers as reported to the Casino Control Commission.

Lee


For the month of January:

Bally's: 2008 = 288,841
2009 = 366,607
2010 = 412,943

Borgata: 2008 = 3,784,836
2009 = 3,345,147
2010 = 3,019,053

Caesar's: 2008 = 568,028
2009 = 548,545
2010 = 737,333

Harrah's: 2008 = 329,611
2009 = 569,050
2010 = 703,370

Showboat: 2008 = 396,871
2009 = 402,654
2010 = 307,703

Tropicana: 2008 = 660,743
2009 = 628,093
2010 = 539,588

Trump Taj: 2008 = 1,643,843
2009 = 1,576,843
2010 = 1,513,013

For the month of February:

Bally's: 2008 = 292,558
2009 = 344,769
2010 = 344,671

Borgata: 2008 = 2,205,481
2009 = 1,993,862
2010 = 1,734,103

Caesar's: 2008 = 560,386
2009 = 518,882
2010 = 405,257

Harrah's: 2008 = 357,948
2009 = 507,990
2010 = 545,391

Showboat: 2008 = 326,529
2009 = 360,239
2010 = 244,794

Tropicana: 2008 = 649,813
2009 = 569,545
2010 = 470,790

Trump Taj: 2008 = 1,484,867
2009 = 1,445,075
2010 = 1,194,240

For the month of March:

Bally's: 2008 = 364,840
2009 = 516,078
2010 = 493,494

Borgata: 2008 = 2,504,065
2009 = 2,307,214
2010 = 2,077,765

Caesar's: 2008 = 1,118,246
2009 = 1,052,641
2010 = 846,732

Harrah's: 2008 = 396,200
2009 = 567,624
2010 = 689,483

Showboat: 2008 = 351,083
2009 = 374,882
2010 = 297,818

Tropicana: 2008 = 806,232
2009 = 615,049
2010 = 547,188

Trump Taj: 2008 = 1,763,880
2009 = 1, 543,586
2010 = 1,432,162

For the month of April:

Bally's: 2008 = 292,040
2009 = 483,578
2010 = 365,316

Borgata: 2008 = 2,127,348
2009 = 2,028,713
2010 = 2,510,057

Caesar's: 2008 = 559,410
2009 = 543,093
2010 = 495,314

Harrah's: 2008 = 392,733
2009 = 508,009
2010 = 592,873

Showboat: 2008 = 287,569
2009 = 315,642
2010 = 284,581

Tropicana: 2008 = 635,961
2009 = 572,215
2010 = 503,027

Trump Taj: 2008 = 1,462,203
2009 = 1,492,446
2010 = 1,354,983

For the month of May:

Bally's: 2008 = 381,150
2009 = 388,732
2010 = 396,691

Borgata: 2008 = 2,681,266
2009 = 2,405,891
2010 = 2,001,578

Caesar's: 2008 = 621,246
2009 = 569,532
2010 = 518,167

Harrah's: 2008 = 588,271
2009 = 687,735
2010 = 724,417

Showboat: 2008 = 401,740
2009 = 397,284
2010 = 284,256

Tropicana: 2008 = 701,824
2009 = 743,372
2010 = 507,862

Trump Taj: 2008 = 1,605,000
2009 = 1,565,050
2010 = 1,793,735

For the month of June:

Bally's: 2008 = 287,900
2009 = 312,581
2010 = 368,941

Borgata: 2008 = 2,582,360
2009 = 2,528,160
2010 = 2,098,283

Caesar's: 2008 = 579,046
2009 = 522,861
2010 = 419,414

Harrah's: 2008 = 421,569
2009 = 553,774
2010 = 549,032

Showboat: 2008 = 389,432
2009 = 464,935
2010 = 297,233

Tropicana: 2008 = 648,899
2009 = 585,509
2010 = 457,986

Trump Taj: 2008 = 1,409,800
2009 = 1,449,425
2010 = 1,404,286

For the month of July:

Bally's: 2008 = 338,887
2009 = 349,946
2010 = 489,450

Borgata: 2008 = 2,490,480
2009 = 2,335,790
2010 = 1,997,090

Caesar's: 2008 = 676,851
2009 = 608,328
2010 = 401,822

Harrah's: 2008 = 531,266
2009 = 624,943
2010 = 547,803

Showboat: 2008 = 384,940
2009 = 533,535
2010 = 295,553

Tropicana: 2008 = 730,532
2009 = 660,497
2010 = 547,001

Trump Taj: 2008 = 1,673,107
2009 = 1,627,634
2010 = 1,330,365

Pretty sad that Showboat is consistently bringing up the rear in 2010, given how popular their tourneys were once upon a time. They allowed that room to die a slow death, that's for sure.

Great info. TY.

Anybody know why this is? I have played in a number of Showboat Tourneys and was curious why that room seems to be headed to hell in a hand basket. FWIW, I've always had a good experience there.

Wouldn't net profit or net less give a lot more accurate picture of how any casino is doing? (Revenues are not the same as profits.)

Simply posting revenue numbers without any context of how they apply to profit or loss seems meaningless, IMO. For example, General Motors had revenue of $150 billion in 2008, and was hemorraging money after expenses were factored in.

Lee, thanks for posting the data. I copied it into Excel and put it into a format I could digest more easily -- a table and charts.

The info you're asking for probably isn't publicly available. But what was posted is far from meaningless given that it's comparing how each room has done relative to itself the past three years.

You are a spreadsheet God! Beautiful!

Thanks for all the stats. You think perhaps the decline of the Boat as well as the lower numbers in all the casino revenues has to do with the poor economy? I mean I know it's a factor plus the advent of the PA casinos don't help either but you know. But I think AC will rebound somewhat when the economy rebounds a little bit too. I'm just wondering how much of the decline is just poor management by the casinos in AC and how much is just the fact that the economy is not so great these days.

These numbers make AC look like it has been drying out.

Borgata has been sold out every day since Memorial Day weekend according to a staff member I spoke to.

However, this prolly wouldnt be possible without all their promotions and significantly lower room rates.

Eponymous: Thanks for the spread sheet and charts. If I knew how to do that, I would have.

You are correct, it would be nice to know all of this. But where would one find the information? Especially from privately held corporations such as Harrah's. I'ld be amazed if they published breakdowns on the cost of running poker rooms, for example. And a lot of costs - electricity, security, etc. - are probably not broken out at all. No real way to find them. I'm open to suggestions, though.

As I stated at the beginning. One has to be very carefull about drawing conclusions. Remember the old saying about the 3 types of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics. The numbers can be used to show all types of things - some of which may or may not be true, some of which are false, and some of which are true.

What drives the numbers? All sorts of things. The opening of casinos in other states, the weather, the economy, etc.

An interesting study would compare poker room numbers against slot machine and table game numbers in order to get a relative sense of how poker has been doing. Maybe if I get some free time.

Lee

Interesting to see that Bay101 has higher revenues than Borgata's poker room.

That is interesting. I've always wondered how all the California cardroom revenues compared to other "big poker regions" like Vegas or AC.

Q2 2006 Bay101 Audit

You can figure out the gross revenue from the 13% tax they pay.

Note that it also includes estimated tax payments, so you can approximate the profits too.

While it's true that gross revenue doesn't equal profit, the statistics are very clear that the Showboat has brought in the least revenue of AC's poker rooms every month in 2010, and by a substantial margin. I reported on here a couple months ago that I walked through their card room on a Saturday morning and they had exactly one active cash game table going. They used to routinely get 85-100 people for their Saturday tourneys, and now they're lucky if they get 50. It's because they moved that room and the noise level is intolerable. I can't see any other explanation how the revenue and action in there could fall so precipitously.

Showboat was my 2nd favorite room in AC for a while. It was my goto place when I couldn't get a deal at Borgata and didn't feel like slumming it in Absecon.

Most interesting to me is that Bally's shows year over year increases in most months while Borgata shows year over year declines in (all/most?) of them.

I think 4Q 2010 and 1Q 2011 numbers are going to be the most telling on whether or not the PA/DE/WV room openings will hurt AC. Outside of the summer season there's less reason to travel to AC over visiting a local room.

Is it possible that Bally's is showing increases due to the addition of the 1-1 game and cheap tournaments? I have always regarded that place as one of the worst poker rooms around, yet they are showing increases for some strange reason. Maybe it's the hot dogs.

Thanks for the graphs. Another interesting one would be a yearly graph for marketshare by month to see which players are gaining/losing players.

I'm pretty sure most of the big spikes in the graphs are due mostly to the Bad beat jackpots. Taj (May '10), Bally's (Mar '10, July '10) all coincide with times when they had large jackpots. I would venture to guess that July '09 was when Showboat last had a large jackpot.

Yeah we have spikes that can be a little inconsistent, and since AC is so seasonal I like year-over-year data over monthly comparisons. We get a pretty good sample size looking at our slot data but even that can be pretty choppy.

But looking at the revenue for some of those rooms, and plugging in overhead, you can get a good idea why comps aren't all that great and why a couple places don't have poker or closed their room.

And wow, Showboat looks pretty bad, they're getting down to about where Hilton was when they packed it in. I didn't know it was that big a drop

No problem. I use spreadsheets a lot at work and when I was in school, so I have become handy with Excel.

This would be excellent.

I would do this, but I think with this set of data (overall casino win, but doesn't include the non-poker casinos), it might be misleading to calculate market share from these numbers alone. The casinos not represented here could be gaining or losing (and probably are doing one or the other) which would taint the numbers for this subset.

Thanks for the info. Will be very interesting to see the August comparisons. As a former Harrah's AC player, I was not surprised to see the downtick in July 2010. It's especially interesting given that July 2009 was at the end of the first year of the expansion of their poker room. To me that July 2010 number is even worse than expected because in July 2008 the expanded room was barely up and running. To be 2 years into a new room and at the same level as right when the room was expanded is telling.

Anyone have information on hands played at Stars/Fulltilt from the same period? Also it would be useful to look at information from casinos within another state, like Commerce for example.

Do you happen to have the data for the other 6 month's of the year?

Edit: I'm surprised how much Borgata dropped. They look like they are 50 percent from their highs