GGRAsia – Nevada casino capacity halved to 25pct amid rise in virus

Nevada casino capacity halved to 25pct amid rise in virus

Nov 23, 2020 Newsdesk Latest News, Top of the deck, World

Nevada’s governor, Steve Sisolak, said at a Sunday press conference that occupancy limits at the state’s casinos and their dining and drinking outlets would be cut from 50 percent to 25 percent starting from 12.01am on Tuesday (November 24), in order to slow the spread of Covid-19.

The news was reported by multiple local media outlets.

Nevada was one of the first jurisdictions in the United States to reopen its casino resorts; for the Las Vegas Strip (pictured in a file photo) on a rolling basis, starting from June 4.

A dedicated website of the Nevada Governor’s Office and the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, showed that as of Sunday, the state had experienced 1,476 Covid-19 cases daily, on a 14-day rolling average. That took the cumulative cases to 133,888, including 2,017 deaths.

Three of Macau’s six current casino licensees have parent companies based in Las Vegas. They are MGM China Holdings Ltd, majority controlled by MGM Resorts International; Sands China Ltd, part of Las Vegas Sands Corp; and Wynn Macau Ltd, controlled by Wynn Resorts Ltd.

Mr Sisolak had initially ordered all casinos and other non-essential businesses in Nevada to close for 30 days with effect from March 18. He extended that instruction to run until April 30, and subsequently left the closure open-ended.

By the third quarter, the U.S. commercial casino market was reported as largely back in operation across the nation.

The commercial gaming market in the U.S. – including land-based casinos, sports betting and iGaming – achieved in the third quarter, revenue equal to 81 percent of the industry’s pre-Covid-19 levels in the same three months of 2019, according to recent research pubished by the American Gaming Association (AGA).

By comparison, in the Macau market, third-quarter casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) was only 6.9 percent of that achieved a year earlier. Macau casinos were only shuttered as a precaution for two weeks in February, but since they returned to operation, regional travel restrictions have dramatically reduced the tally of visitors to the city.