Traditional casino revenue fell 2% last month in Atlantic City but online winning were up 
18%. The entry of PokerStars wasn’t immediately felt, as Resorts Digital‘s market share stood at 12%. behind Borgata ($4 million, 28%), Caesars Interactive (20%), Golden Nugget (20%) and Tropicana (20%). Borgata slots were flat, despite 2% higher coin-in, while a 1.5% dip in table wagering triggered a 14% falloff in casino win. The house definitely lost last month. Borgata’s $54 million haul represented a 4% decline from last year. On a citywide basis, slot performance was almost exactly like Borgata’s: flat, despite 1% more handle. Table play was also flat, with the casinos losing 6.5% on a year/year basis.
For once, Bally’s ($17 million) was the star of the Caesars Entertainment trio, up 10%. Caesars Atlantic City ($22 million) drooped 5%, while Harrah’s Resort ($28.5 million) was off by 12%. Overachiever of the month was Resorts Atlantic City, up 18% on a $13 million gross, but still incrementally behind Trump Taj Mahal ($13 million), despite the latter’s 10% decline. Tropicana (up 6%) grossed $22 million and Golden Nugget rounded out the market with a $17 million gross, a 4% gain.
The Boardwalk’s newest booster is Glenn Straub, who is going to reopen Revel this summer, under a new name. (No news there.) “They tore down over 1,000 houses,” Straub enthused, “and they moved everyone who was panhandling out of the city. I’ve committed $500 million and Carl Icahn has committed at least that much. Atlantic City is a perfect place to put money. It’s going to multiply by 10 times what it’s now worth.” Guess he hasn’t heard about that casinos-in-north New Jersey thing.
* Michael Leven is calling it a day, in terms of his relationship with Las Vegas Sands. The former COO is now stepping down from the Sands board of directors, no reason given. 
Hey, the guy’s in his seventies, his relationship with Sands has probably made him as rich as Midas, he deserves some time off. Leven will be remembered as the executive who stepped in when Sands was on the brink financially, its stock in the toilet, and helped bring it back to prosperity. He was also the hero of the Iranian-hacking crisis, making the decision to pull all Sands sites off the Internet until the disaster had been minimized. I hope he got hazard pay for his tenure. Besides, working for Sheldon Adelson can’t be easy.
* Correction: The giant letters from the Riviera are *not* going to the Neon Museum but to a prospective neon museum in Reno. For the full story, look for it soon in “Question of the Day.”
* Just when you think you’ve seen everything there is to see in Las Vegas, some guy robs a Carl’s Jr. and his weapon of choice is a sword.
