Atlantic City Casinos See Profit Decrease in 2022

This week, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement released the 2022 revenue reports for Atlantic City casinos. Data revealed that the state's casinos and online casino operators saw a decrease of over 31% within the fourth quarter of 2022. Overall, Atlantic City casinos were down compared to 2021, despite rising net revenues.

The nine casinos in Atlantic City were able to generate over $731 million in operating profits for 2022. This was a drop of almost 5% from 2021. NJ casinos brought in over $3 billion in net revenues, which was a nice jump from 2021 by more than 9%.

Within the last three months of 2022, the casinos earned around $770 million in net revenues. When looking at gross operating profits for the year compared to 2019, the pre-COVID world, the operators were up over 19% with a net revenue boost of 4.5%.

Hotel stays were up in 2022 as more people started to travel to the area. In 2022, the occupancy rate hit over 73%, a bit higher than the 67.6% from the previous year.

Of the casinos operating in the Garden State, some performed well last year while others did not. Hard Rock Hotel & Casino was a top performer, seeing a double-digit increase in annual profits for the year. In 2022, the brand earned $128 million, a more than 19% increase from 2021.

Ocean Casino Resort was up, too, generating $96 million last year. The brand saw a 5.5% increase from the previous year and has been steadily improving its earning rate after starting out with major losses in 2018.

Bally's was also up for 2022, seeing a huge 85% increase in gross operating profits. The casino did pots a loss of $1.9 million, but this was a significant difference from the over $13 million in losses from the year before.

The market leader for Atlantic City is Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. The brand earned just over $140 million for the year. While this is a big number, it is almost 20% less than the year before. It is over 33% lower than the 2019 totals.

While many casinos saw a nice return for 2022, others did not fare as well. A handful of casinos saw a significant decline in earnings. All three of the casinos operated by Caesars Entertainment were down for the year.

Harrah's Resort saw the largest drop, dipping over 10% with $89.4 million in gross operating profits. Tropicana was next with a 7.6% decline and just over $109 million in profits. Caesars Atlantic City saw a decrease of almost 3% with $60.4 million in earnings.

Resorts Casino was down in operating profits by over $6 million but saw a nice profit increase by 2.8% with $15.4 million in earnings.

Now that we have seen the 2022 totals, how will 2023 fare? New Jersey casinos have already seen a drop in earnings from January to February, with many months left to go. February earnings came in at $142.6 million, but this was a drop of over 6% when compared to January 2023. Will the remaining months fare the same?

We should see an uptick in earnings over the next few months as summer arrives and more people travel to the Garden State. Summer, especially the Fourth of July weekend, is a significant earning period for casinos in NJ.

The summer may help boost the state's overall yearly earnings and help make up for the loss in the previous months. It will be interesting to see how the next few months play out and if the state can beat the 2022 totals once the year ends.