Missouri’s thirteen casinos have seen yet another year of decline. Admissions have dropped 8 percent and the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) has dropped 5 percent.
The Missouri Gaming Commission Executive Director Roger Stottlemyre said the decline has been a trend over the past few years.
“We’ve had this for three years or four where we’ve had a drop in both AGR and admissions,” Stottlemyer said.
The casino’s admissions dropped from 1,220,356 in fiscal year 2013 to 1,164,210 in fiscal year 2014. AGR dropped from 40,353,915 to 37,892,759.
Casinos in Missouri pay 21 percent of state and local gaming tax. There is also an admission tax of $2 per person, per two hour visit. Cities that have casinos receive 2 percent of the AGR gaming tax and the state receives a gaming tax of 19 percent of the casino’s AGR.
Patrons also dropped across the state by 3 percent.
“The economy has an impact no doubt about that,” Stottlemyre said. “There’s not as many patrons attending. The ones that are attending aren’t staying as long. I’m not sure, other than the fact that the disposable income is not available to a lot of people.”
The Isle of Capri in Cape Girardeau opened just shy of two years ago. The casino had a high number of admissions in 2013, but it has slowly declined since then. According to the annual report for fiscal year 2014, March showed the biggest decline in participation compared to last year. According to the annual report for fiscal year 2013, there were more than 210,000 admissions during the first full month of the casino’s establishment in November of 2012. But just one year later, the number of admissions dropped to a 148,767.
“You don’t know exactly what you’re going to get when you open up a casino,” Stottlemyre said. “You’re always going to get a lot of customer attention during the early times of the opening, of course. Then you’re going probably have a lull too and they kind of have to learn their market. They have to learn who they’re dealing with and it changes. They learn how to market for their area. It’s a learning process and it takes a while.”
There are four casinos in the Kansas City and St. Louis market and five casinos in “out of state” areas located along the Mississippi River.
Out of the five out of state locations, Cape Girardeau has the highest number for admissions and patrons but the lowest win per patron at $58.74 for the month of August.
A law passed over the summer might help casinos in Missouri. The new credit law allows casinos to loan money to gamblers. Gamblers can establish $10,000 in credit.
“This money that they would borrow would have to be paid back within 30 days,” Stottlemyre said. “It keeps that gambler from having to carry large amount of cash with them if they’re inclined to bet large amounts of money.”