Nevada casino gaming revenue plummets 99.4% in May

Nevada’s gambling regulator’s monthly revenue releases are starting to resemble classified intelligence reports, leaving us absolutely no clearer as to who might have playing that slot machine on the grassy knoll.

On Tuesday, the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) released its casino gaming revenue figures for the month of May, which showed total statewide revenue of just $5,808,507, a 99.4% decline from the same month last year. That said, it was up from just $3.65m that the casinos reported in April, so yay progress.

In addition to being decimated by the COVID-19 closure of all casinos, the reports for both April and May are also notable for the big black bars hiding the minimal revenue contributions from online poker and sports betting. If you squint your eyes, you can almost convince yourself that you’re reading virtually any page from the Mueller report.

The data lockdown is based on NGCB rules that require its gaming verticals to have “three or more” licensees in order to reveal revenue specifics, ostensibly to protect proprietary operator info. The state currently has only one active online poker licensee – Caesars Entertainment’s WSOP.com – so breaking out the betting data would reveal how much (or how little) the site is currently generating.