Just to show you the kind of week I’m having, it’s Thursday and I’m just now getting around to posting a link to my bi-weekly LVBP column, which I should have done on Monday or Tuesday. I just got the beta version of the Macau gaming summary up, and I’ve jumped into a study of Nevada casino employment that’s getting more and more interesting. I’m tracking trends in payroll and productivity from 1990 to 2009, and everything I find opens up new questions.
Which is actually similar to what happened with an Atlantic City slot study that I did a few weeks ago. With the dramatic decline in the number of slots, win per slot has actually remained fairly robust. Here’s my column explaining it in the LVBP:
Atlantic City has had a rough few years. A partial smoking ban has hurt business and the debut of several competitors, particularly Pennsylvania slot machines, has reduced the city’s already-modest horizons. With the recent introduction of table games, it’;s a good time to look at how Atlantic City’s core business, slot machines, has fared over the years.
via Las Vegas Business Press :: David G. Schwartz : Slots keep Atlantic City’s hopes for future afloat.
Looking at this data got me thinking that the future might be a smaller industry, which is bad news for Atlantic City, but not such bad news for operators who can run a good casino.
There’s some goofy stuff going on with the formatting (a paragraph is repeated at the end), but hopefully that doesn’t detract too much from the column’s main point.