An Atlantic City gambling casino smoking forbidding would hold a devasting effect on gaming revenue, so says an analyst at CBRE Equity Research.
John DeCree, a senior psychoanalyst at North Gaming, a subsidiary of CBRE since 2021, projects that a make out ban on indoor casino smoking at Atlantic City’s ix casinos would negatively wallop one-year receipts gaming revenue (GGR) past as a great deal as 20-25%.
New island of Jersey lawmakers uphold to mull lawmaking that would oddment the smoking loophole afforded to the casinos and below the state’s unclouded broadcast natural law passed inwards 2006. Currently, Atlantic Ocean City casinos tin tolerate smoking on up to 25% of their gaming floor. But DeCree says those smoking spaces are where upwards of 50% of the annual GGR is generated.
This is consistent with our search over the years that often reveal smoking sections in casinos bring forth substantially higher win per years than non-smoking sections,” DeCree wrote.
DeCree adds that since Atlantic City is primarily a drive-in destination, the Orient Coast gaming mecca relies heavily on gamblers from City of Brotherly Love and New York. Outlawing cigarettes, the Union Gaming analyst reasons, would final result inward some of those players opting for casinos where smoking remains permitted inward Keystone State and Connecticut.
Quarter Revenue at Stake
A growing coalition of Atlantic City gambling casino workers debate that it’s long yesteryear due to decimate indoor smoking on the gaming floors. The social movement has gained bipartisan back up inwards capital of New Jersey where at least 43 elected lawmakers experience lent their names to Senate Bill 264/Assembly Bill 2151. The bills are clones of I another and to each one seeks to get rid of gambling casino smoking.
The Casino Association of New Jersey, however, says such a forbiddance would weakened the manufacture and result inward substantive task layoffs. The swop radical earlier this year commissioned a hit the books on the consequences of banning cigarettes. That report, conducted past Spectrum Gaming Group, also found that a smoking forbidding would wound GGR in a similar acoustic projection as the single issued this calendar week by DeCree.
DeCree adds that the 20-25% electronegative gaming revenue calculate is conservative.
“Atlantic City must pulling its customers off from more conveniently-located gaming options and the absence of smoking would leave behind many of its higher economic value smoking customers without conclude to work the trip,” Decree said. “For those smoking customers who manage allay take a leak the touch off to Atlantic Ocean City, smoking breaks would likely make longer relative to regional casinos presumption the size of it and scale of measurement of Atlantic City casinos resulting inwards a greater red ink of Time on Device (TOD) – a key metric inwards gaming revenue.”
Data Proof
Atlantic City cassino workers fence that a smoking ban would non suffer gaming as a great deal as the manufacture and psychoanalyst believes. But regular if it would, they say their health should take priority o'er GGR and profits.
DeCree says the economic health of the niner casinos would be expected to have in viewing of a all over smoking prohibition. The psychoanalyst pinpoints several other markets where casino smoking was eliminated and the GGR impact they for each one endured in the first of all 12 months after the regulatory implementation.
DeCree cites Harrah’s New Orleans seeing its revenue plump 20% after the city-instituted smoking ban when into gist inwards Apr of 2015. Similarly, Chicagoland casinos in Prairie State saw their GGRs correct 22% after a smoking prohibition era was instituted in January of 2008.