With the continued recovery from the negative impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and the commercial casino industry in the United States has reportedly just experienced its two-month best-ever start to a year.
This encouraging achievement was contained within an official update from the American Gaming Association lobby group following 2021 in which the nation’s aggregated commercial gross gaming revenues grew by more than 21 percent year on year to top a record $53 billion, according to a Tuesday report from the Associated Press news service.
The Recovery that is Remarkable
According to the American Gaming Association, the combined gross gaming revenues for the over 460 commercial casinos in the United States totaled $8.92 billion in January and February, representing a 19% increase over the same period in 2020. The organization also claimed that these receipts came from in-person and online casino games and sports betting, despite the fact that only five states, including Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana, Kansas, and Rhode Island, had a slower start to the year.
Root rebirth
Bill Miller is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Gaming Association, and he reportedly used the update to declare that ‘the core of the gambling industry,’ which refers to land-based slots and table games, saw aggregated gross gaming revenues for January and February increase by just under 1% over the same two-month period in 2020, to $7.18 billion. However, the lawyer allegedly revealed that such receipts had increased in 14 of the 25 American jurisdictions when compared to two years ago, while Las Vegas visitation had increased by nearly 70%.
Reports say that according to a statement, Miller said that this record start to the year demonstrates the sustained momentum of our industry’s recovery into 2022. While it remains to be seen if they’ll match last year’s all-time high, it’s clear that Americans are continuing to make gaming a first-choice entertainment option.
Some of the frustrating factors
According to the American Gaming Association, the drop in business from Rhode Island’s two land-based casinos was due to “the highly competitive environment of New England after Encore Boston Harbor opened in June of 2019,” and gambling venues in Kansas were impacted by “added competition from a new tribal gaming facility close to the state’s largest commercial casino.”
The interest of iGaming
In terms of coronavirus-assisted online gambling, the American Gaming Association reported that combined February revenues from Delaware, Michigan, Connecticut, West Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania totaled $373.4 million, representing a 46.1 percent year-on-year increase but a 6.5 percent decrease from the previous months. It allegedly concluded by stating that iGaming accounted for just under 16 percent of the industry’s total receipts in the second month of 2022, the lowest such percentage since August.
