Inside Asian Gaming

February 2012 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 17 Feature were down 9.7% that year. Revenues from blackjack and slots, the mainstays of the floor, had plummeted 20% and 12.4%, respectively. In 2010, baccarat revenue jumped another 22%, elevating the game’s contribution to $1.2 billion and generating more than 22% of total gambling revenue for the biggest properties on the Strip. It was the deciding factor in their ability to post their first annual increase in combined win in three years. The latest figures available from the state show baccarat revenue up 7.2% through November 2011 to $1.3 billion at the 16 Strip resorts that were dealing the game. That’s a whopping 43% of their total table market and 23% of their combined win. Baccarat was generating nearly $1 of every $4 those casinos retained from all their customers at all their games, slot machines included. The play is overwhelmingly high-end. Of the 5,460 or so table games spread across Nevada last year, there were at most about 260 baccarat tables (not counting mini-baccarat), withmore than 240 of them concentrated within the aforementioned 16 casinos. Their haul, bolstered by a 12.55 win percentage (the mean is around 11%), averaged $5.2 million per table. Daily average win per table: $15,537. Blackjack, with four times as many tables (1,125) in the 23 largest Strip casinos, generated $714 million, about $1,900 in win per table per day. The unit win would seem to pale against Macau’s VIP rooms, but it doesn’t account for the fact that most of the play is occurring at only six or seven casinos: MGM Grand and its sister properties ARIA and Bellagio, Caesars Palace, The Venetian/Palazzo and Wynn/Encore; a roster dominated, not surprisingly, by those whose parent companies also operate in Macau. “Their presence [in Macau and Singapore] gives them knowledge and the relationships with players they didn’t have before,” says Brent Pirosch, who heads the consulting arm of CB Richard Ellis’ Global Gaming Group. “The greater your contacts, the more possible it is to reach out to a larger market. Before, where maybe it was just a satellite office in Hong Kong, now just in terms of sheer volume they’re reaching more people.” David G. Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, says the players making the biggest impact are Chinese “almost exclusively”. “Why the spike? It’s a macroeconomic question. More than anything, it’s a result of the expansion of wealth in China. And, of course, the operators are responding to that. They go where the money is.” The number of millionaire households Table game revenue share by game Lion feeder—MGM Resorts International cross markets between its Macau and Vegas properties Source: UNLV Center for Gaming Research