December in Vegas: The house won; Sheldon of La Mancha

There are gambling markets … and then there’s Las Vegas. Players opened their wallets — oh, did they ever — and lost big. Casino winnings on the Las Vegas Strip were up 13.5% and Nevada casinos overall did 10% better than last year, for a statewide gross of $943 million. Downtown casino winnings shot up almost 20%. That’s right: 20%. Even Strip slot play was up 4%, thanks to a combination of slightly higher coin-in and incrementally tighter hold. But what mainly drove those balmy Strip numbers, of course, was baccarat, where $185 million was raked in. Whales and smaller aquatic fauna bet larger (up 23%) and lost bigger (ditto). Other table games saw 11.5% higher play and the house was lucky indeed, its winning rising nearly 18%. (According to J.P. Morgan, 18.5%.) Except for some outlying Clark County markets like Mesquite and Primm — as well as Reno (-4%) and Elko (-2%), all significant Nevada jurisdictions reported improvement, from 2% in Laughlin to 14% in North Las Vegas and 17% on the Boulder Strip. However, Boyd Gaming missed out on the fun, its revenues up “only” 4%, according to Deutsche Bank. Maybe it’s those “Night of the Living Dead” TV spots …

The Strip will have a tough time repeating this double-digit feat in January, which saw a 29% revenue surge last year. Particularly difficult to replicate will be the explosive performance of hyper-volatile Lake Tahoe, up 57% last month and, no, that’s not a typo.

Where’s “Alcorcon”? It’s outside Madrid and you’ll soon he hearing lots about it, since that’s where Sheldon Adelson will build his $22 billion EuroVegas. But first, he’s got to persuade banks to part with $14 billion, to be spent over a 10-year period and recouped … God knows when. If the super-duper-megaresort were to return a best-case 20% of investment annually (unlikely), Adelson would be 95 when the project pays off — and I’m taking the “over” on that one.

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