Nevada revenue down

Nevada’s casinos are reporting a $4 billion dollar loss for 2011.  But how is this important to online gambling?  Let’s take a look at that for a moment.

Nevada casinos have long been a voice against online gambling. After all, if people gambled online, they wouldn’t have to travel to Vegas to visit the casinos. But then the economy shifted and it became less a matter of whether or not people wanted to travel to whether or not they could travel. Discretionary spending is down. People can’t afford to travel to Las Vegas if they want to. So Vegas casinos are still losing revenue. Which means they need to find a way to replace that revenue and they’ve slowly come to realize that online gambling could work in their favor.

See, the question comes down to who runs and operates online gambling in the US. We’ve already seen MGM and Boyd entering into negotiations with the massive online gambling site bwin.party. This could serve both as bwin.party’s entry into the US market and a way for MGM and Boyd to increase revenue. If the online casinos are required to operate out of an existing and approved US gambling operation, then the Vegas casino brands stand to benefit. And oddly, so do the online casinos. Because players are always searching for a best online casino guide and wouldn’t that be easier to do if the casinos were actually the same casinos you could play with in Las Vegas?

Also, I can’t help but think of the great prizes and promotional benefits this could bring. Look, airline miles are a big promotion for credit card companies. Well, imagine if by playing at an online casino you could earn bonus points that could be traded for perks in Vegas. Imagine of the casinos could track your gambling and actually give you comps for their hotels, just like they do big Vegas players.  I’d love to earn a Vegas vacation while playing Video Poker at home.