Atlantic City casinos down 10% in April

“These numbers don’t shock me,” Reel Entertainment CEO Kevin DeSanctis told the Associated Press on Wednesday, as the company discussed its first month a day ahead of the release of revenue figures by the state Division of Gaming Enforcement. “When you open something of this size, there’s an awful lot of work to do and an awful lot of things to take care of.”

DeSanctis said Revel was much more concerned with making sure things worked properly and getting rid of technology glitches that bedeviled some in-room televisions. June, July and August are the months in which he predicted Revel would ramp up its revenues.

Atlantic City’s casinos as a whole took in us$ 260.6 million, a 10 percent decline from a year ago. Slot machine revenue fell 9.2 percent, to us$ 189.5 million, while table game revenue decreased by 12.1 percent, to us$  71.1 million.

The Tropicana Casino and Resort had a banner month at the tables, tripling its winnings from last April to more than us$ 9 million. Overall, the casino’s revenues were up nearly 39 percent, to us$ 26.7 million. The only other casino to post a revenue increase was the Golden Nugget, whose us$ 11 million winnings were up 1 percent from a year ago, when the casino operated as Trump Marina Hotel Casino.

The city’s top casino, the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, was widely assumed to be one of the casinos that would be most hurt by the emergence of Revel. Yet the Borgata’s us$ 49.6 million in revenue was down only 0.3 percent from a year ago, and was nearly us$ 15 million better than its closest competitor. That was Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City, whose us$ 34.5 million was down 10 percent from a year ago.