In the wake of the Ausaf Umar Siddiqui case, I’ve gotten a few calls from reporters about casino credit gone bad. Since individual casinos don’t generally release lists of which of their credit players are deadbeats and which aren’t, I had a hard time estimating just how common it is for players to run up multi-million dollar debts with casinos. Looking at the lawsuits filed tells you how many of them go to court, but what about those that don’t?
Looking at the Nevada Gaming Abstract I got something of an answer. According to the 2007 edition, page 2-19, in 2007 the 23 casinos in the Las Vegas Strip area that made more than $72,000,000 had total casino revenues of about $5.9 billion, and wrote off about $112.5 million to “bad debt expense.” So 1.9% of total casino income is lost to bad debts.
To put it in perspective, that’s more than the sports books made in the entire year ($83 million). It’s also roughly ten percent of the total spent on casino comps (about $1.3 billion). Unfortunately, I can’t tease out what percentage of markers end up unpaid, but as you see it’s clearly statistically significant.
Another interesting tidbit–casinos lost about $5 million to bad debts in the rooms department, $1.1 million in food, and $47,000 in beverage. Is this a case of credit card chargebacks or something? I know that restaurants are getting expensive, but I don’t think they offer in-house payment plans or layaway.
Here’s something to make you feel better: no matter how bad things are going for you at your job, I’m pretty sure you didn’t make $5 million in bad loans during the year, as the average Strip credit manager apparently did.
The Nevada Gaming Abstract is full of such enlightening numbers, which is why it’s the inaugural featured resource over at gaming.unlv.edu.