The casinos of Nevada truly set the standard for how the gambling industry operates across the planet. That’s what makes the recent news that Nevada’s casinos, including those on the world famous Vegas Strip, suffered a revenue disaster that feels downright apocalyptic.
All told, the combined revenue of all of Nevada’s casinos came in at an astonishing $5.8 million. That’s down an astounding 99.4 percent from May 1919. For the entire year, Nevada’s casinos are down more than 40 percent over the previous year’s take. Most of that $5.8 million came from mobile sportsbooks and online poker.
Nowhere was the devastation more starkly evident than in the casinos of the Las Vegas Strip. For the entire month of May, 2020, a mere 151,300 visitors. That’s down considerably from the 3.7 million who visited Vegas in May 2019.
Over at McCarran International Airport, the normally non-stop airfield saw its traffic drop more than 99 percent. With only 151,000 people visiting the Strip, it’s not surprising to find that only 397,912 passed through the airport. By way of comparison, about 4.5 million people came through McCarran.
For anyone looking to book a hotel room, and there were some available, there wouldn’t have been much competition for rooms. Though many hotels were closed, the normally tourist-packed city filled just 2.8 percent of its available rooms, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
The good news for Vegas, and the rest of Nevada, is that May is in the books and June 1 brought the re-opening of most casinos. Though official numbers haven’t been released, the early news from Vegas sounds encouraging (though it could hardly be worse).