February 18, 2010 (CAP Newswire) – Is bad news for land-based casinos good news for the online gambling industry, and for online casino affiliate marketers? If so, recent reports that Las Vegas’s fortunes are continuing to decline may be welcomed by some online marketers.
It’s been widely documented that Las Vegas has been struggling for years now, ever since the current economic downturn started back in 2008. But, whereas a lot of industries have started to recover, the numbers in Las Vegas — the United States’ gambling heart and soul — are still bleak.
The latest reports show that two Vegas icons, the Las Vegas Sands and the MGM Mirage casinos, are still posting big financial losses.
“MGM, which opened the $8.5 billion CityCenter project on the Las Vegas Strip in December, posted a loss of 21 cents a share before one-time items, much worse than analysts’ average forecast of a loss of 13 cents,” writes Deena Beasley for Reuters. Read her article here.
And “Las Vegas Sands Corp. today … reported continued weakness at its Las Vegas Strip hotel-casinos,” writes Steve Green at the Las Vegas Sun. “The company lost $113.9 million or 17 cents per share vs. a loss in the year-ago quarter of $136.5 million or 27 cents.” Green goes on to write that the company actually posted an increase in its overall quarterly revenue — but only because of the performance of its Asian properties. Its Las Vegas casino continues to do poorly. Read Green’s article here.
The upshot is that these casinos, and others in the city, are lowering their room rates. Will that be enough to lure gamblers back into casinos? Or does this spell a larger trend where gamblers are transitioning to playing on the Internet?
In other words, is news like this good or bad for online gambling, and for the affiliate marketing industry that supports it? Do weaker numbers in Vegas mean that people are gambling less overall, because of reduced income? Or does it mean that they’re simply preferring to gamble on the Internet, at a much lower cost, instead? Given that the online trends aren’t as negative as the offline trends, it would seem to be the latter. And that spells opportunity for smart online gambling affiliate marketers.