Dismal revenues for Stateline casinos
Stateline’s casinos were the big losers in September compared to the rest of Nevada.
While the state saw a 1.5 percent increase in gaming revenue last month compared to 2014, the South Shore clubs dropped 10.7 percent to $21.2 million.
The Gaming Control Board on Oct. 29 released the latest numbers. Statewide, casinos won $916.4 million last month compared to $902.6 in September 2014.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
Not a good reflection on LTVA, its leadership, decisions, or offbeat marketing strategy.
Actually it reflects well
Times are not changing…they have changed.
In the day there was no gambling basically anywhere but Nevada. Now that gambling is everywhere, literally, it is only natural that gambling revenues will go down.
Like almost any business or market today the Clubs face the challenge of attracting new millennial aged customers. At the same time they need to get the baby boomers back into gaming. The lack of ongoing “name entertainment” is the root cause. You have to invest to gain a return. Harrahs does the best with quality performers. However has been rock stars or the remains of old groups is not enough to get folks to make the extra drive to Tahoe. What is lost are regular hard core gamblers that are satisfied with the indian Casinos. In the heyday there were always two or three big names performing for a week at a time. Vegas still has that approach or the long running mega shows. I think Hard Rock is taking the right approach but the lack of investment to make it on a par with the Vegas property was a mistake. Their club Vinyl has no seating. Then you bring in a group aimed at 50 somethings and they want go, but also want a seat.
What happened to the Friday night seafood buffet, shoe shines, spotless facilities? These places are tired and lack class today.
The question is are the businesses wiling to make the needed investments to bring back the crowds. Certainly a large portion of the population could care less. The loss of those middle class jobs and the supplementary jobs they support has turned
SLT a haves and have nots community.
The quality of what is marketed to the public and the experience received has diminished to a point it may be impossible to retrieve. I gamble several times a year and dine out frequently and take in a few shows. The summer concert series needs to be replaced in the winter. The cost and quality provided by the Casinos is far below what it was several years ago. The target market customers in the Bay Area have plenty of money. The formula needs to be adjusted to get that money up here.
Though the gambling win was down for September, The visitor count and lodging nights were up considerably for the south shore. Using gambling win as an indicator of the south shore economy is not a good way to gauge it. The casinos way have just been unlucky(or lucky depending upon how much their customers have lost) aslo more and more visitors are just not gamblers.
Read EVERY LIGHT WAS ON by Dwayne Kling for the University of Nevada Oral History program.
pg 424 Harolds Club had good employees and long term employees. Their dealers went for their own tokes….in the sixties and seventies, those jobs were probably $7o,ooo,$8o,ooo-a-year jobs,if not more….
This goes to a comment I made, the employees treat the customers the way they are being treated by their management.
Bill Harrah purchased George’s Gateway Club in January 1955 for $500,000.00 and Harrahs Lake Club opened in June 1955. This is now Harvey’s Lake Tahoe.
In 1956 Harrahs Lake Club was sold for $5,250,000.00 in CASH to Harvey Gross….
I used to deal to players with rolls of $1,000.00 bills as big as your fist;
“All dressed up with nowhere to go”. . . I’ve implied this before, but the new ‘dressings’ will not make too much difference in a populace with much less ‘disposable income’ – the early overwrought emphasis on ‘high rollers’ is now just another pipe dream, as it is the service aspects that make people want to come back, excited enough to “Come Out and Play”. . .
I would dispute Robin’s ‘chain of events’ re: the buying & selling of Harrah’s Lake Club as I went to work there in the summer of 1959 (as the beginning of a 10-year career, leaving in late 1968 in Public Relations).
Harrah’s Lake Club was NOT Harvey’s, but rather an addition to Harvey’s Wagon Wheel which was next door since 1944 – the internal Sage Room is pretty much most of what’s left of the original layout – the Pizza Parlor now there was the Carriage Trade coffee shop, which competed with Harrah’s across-the-street coffee shop of a bit larger size. . .while the Lake Club had its’ own coffee shop, and was the original location of the South Shore Room, while the one we know today was being built on the backside of Harrah’s (formerly Shehadi’s) from 1957-opening in 1959. . .
Very, very few people ever even saw a $ 1,000 bill, as they were transacted only at the bank. . . but we all (in my tenure parking cars at Harrah’s before PR) liked it when real silver dollars were exchanged for those same-size tokens – when people left town, they got rid of those by tipping them all to us when retrieving their car. . . 6-8-10,12 at a time – we just counted them in with tokes and exchanged them for money at the Cashier. . .service was front & center then, which makes all the difference in appreciating the surroundings. . .otherwise, they don’t notice, and DON’T COME BACK. . .
By-the-way, “George” was George Cannon, a Nevada legislator whose name adorned the Reno Airport then . . . as to books, “It was Great While It Lasted”: ‘Northern Nevada’s Entertainment Heyday” – by the legendary Harrah’s PR guy in Reno, Mark Curtis, is a great read about the reasons for Harrah’s Tahoe’s (in particular) prominence over Las Vegas (Harrah’s was not there then; only Reno & Lake Tahoe)…
Mark Curtis’s book was published by UNR’s Black Rock Press.