Bittersweet numbers for the Mississippi Gaming Commission

Local media reports noted that gambling revenue in the state was up 1.4 percent this year over June 2015.

US.- The Mississippi Gaming Commission has released numbers for the first half of the year and even though there have been 12 consecutive months of year on year increase, the first six months of 2016 have not seen a steady ride from the state’s 12 coastal casinos, even though they saw more than US$1 billion worth of “coins” go into slot machines and kept 7.63 percent of that.

Coastal casinos like Beau Rivage and Scarlet Pearl did better at keeping player’s money on the regions 526 tables, with an average hold percentage of 17,76 percent. Of the three regions, Central, Coastal and Northern, the Central region held the most with an overall regional average of 22,89 percent.

Everything indicates that 2016 is on its way to exceed last year’s US$2,097,066,095 in gross gaming revenue with a total at end of June of more than half that at US$1,090,045,292. February has been the best month so far in 2016 with gross gaming revenue of US$190,068,912, bolstered by a more than US$5 million uptick in coastal gaming over the previous month. However, June’s numbers for the coastal casinos had fallen to about US$96.1 million.

Across the state, blackjack is still king of the table games in terms of table volume. The 260 blackjack tables in the coastal casinos account for nearly half of all table games in the region, raking in over 31 percent in the worst performing regions and more than 38 percent in the Central region.

With the overall economy on the mend, recent upgrades and refurbishments at legacy properties, the coastal gaming economy in the Magnolia state should only improve over time.