Coronavirus come-down for Louisiana casino market

The 15 casinos and four racinos in the southern American state of Louisiana reportedly recorded aggregated gross gaming revenues for June that were 19.5% down on the same month last year at just $164.4 million.

According to a Thursday report from The Times-Picayune newspaper citing official figures from the Louisiana Gaming Control Board, the result for the 30-day period comes after the venues were finally allowed to re-open from May 18 following an almost nine-week coronavirus-related shuttering although they still remain subject to 50% capacity restrictions.

Metropolitan malaise:

The Times-Picayune reported that the five gambling-friendly facilities in New Orleans recorded a 43% comparable drop in June combined gross gaming revenues to $25.6 million with the prestigious Harrah’s New Orleans property from Caesars Entertainment Corporation posting a massive 75% reduction to just $5.6 million. The newspaper moreover detailed that the Louisiana city’s trio of riverboat casinos in the Treasure Chest Casino, Boomtown New Orleans and Amelia Belle Casino chalked up a less drastic 20.4% collective diminution to roughly $18.1 million although the $1.9 million brought in by the nearby Fair Grounds Race Course and Slots racino equated to a year-on-year decrease of 48.7%.

Contemporary closure:

Louisiana is widely considered to be the fifth most lucrative casino market in the United States behind only Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York although its ranks were recently thinned when Bossier City’s DiamondJacks Casino Hotel revealed that it would not be emerging from its own coronavirus-induced shutdown. The Times-Picayune reported that this move immediately put 349 people out of work with approximately 4,100 casino workers having been laid off statewide since the start of the pandemic.

Statewide stagnation:

Elsewhere in ‘The Pelican State’ and Baton Rouge’s  three riverboat casinos reportedly saw their own collective gross gaming revenues for June decline by 4.5% year-on-year to $18.3 million while the market around the small city of Opelousas, which is represented by the Evangeline Downs racino from Boyd Gaming Corporation, recorded a comparable 17.4% fall to $5.8 million.

Continuing the bad news and the newspaper reported that the Lake Charles gaming market experienced a 7.2% year-on-year slump in June gross gaming revenues to $70 million while the figure for the area around the city of Shreveport, which had included the now-vanished DiamondJacks Casino Hotel, was 16.8% lower at $44.6 million.