How Much Did The Las Vegas Strip Make From Gambling In 2023?

• The Las Vegas Strip made $8.9 billion in revenue during 2023; up 7% from 2022's GGR (gross gaming revenue) of $8.3 billion.
• Baccarat is booming the Strip's economy
• Formula 1 contributed massively to Novembers GGR success
• A breakdown from January - December of GGR and taxable revenue, within Vegas, compared to last year's figures

The City of Sin has been enticing people from all over the globe to spend a novelty buck at its casinos for decades. Following on from the lockdown madness we were all absorbed in - which hit Las Vegas massively - just how much has the Strip made from gambling revenue in 2023?

Well, considering just how badly the hospitality and entertainment industries were hit, it seems that Las Vegas has been recovering exceptionally well. In fact, going into 2023, Las Vegas started the year with its 23rd consecutive month of exceeding $1 billion in revenue.

In fact, by the time 2023 had concluded, the Las Vegas Strip had brought in $8.90 billion in revenue and a taxable revenue of $8.28 billion, an increase of 7% in both respectively from the year before.

But not only that, the numbers get just more interesting.

2022 on the Las Vegas Strip saw $8.29 billion in revenue and $7.76 billion in taxable revenue - that’s right. For those eagle-eyed readers, the amount of taxable revenue from 2023 was almost more than the overall revenue from 2022.

Let’s break it down a little further, shall we?

2022 Tax On The Las Vegas Strip

While we might not be able to break down the exact tax amount that each casino paid, we can do the next best thing.

• According to the Nevada Gaming Commission’s quarterly reports from 2022, the casinos in Clark County paid $994.5 million towards state taxes during that calendar year, which marks a 14% increase from the year prior
• This was taken from a gaming revenue amount of $8.29 billion and $7.76 billion in taxable revenue, as previously mentioned

• From this, baccarat actually contributed the most to the Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR), with $1.14 billion. Table and card games, as a whole though, brought in $3.7 billion, which is a 20% increase from the year before
• Slots, on the other hand, brought in the other $4.60 billion in GGR, an increase of 15% year on year, with the 1-cent slots winning out of all the denominations, making $1.56 billion in GGR

Q1 2023

The Q1 of 2023 actually started off pretty well. For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to translate the calendar years into the fiscal one and classify Q1 as starting on January 1 and ending on March 31, 2023. For those who aren’t aware, the fiscal year starts on July 1 2022, which only makes everything confusing.

• The total tax collected from Clark County was $253.52 million, an increase of 20% when looking at the same period from the year before
• In January 2023, the Las Vegas Strip brought in $713.22 million in GGR, which is an increase of 26% compared to January in 2022. Overall taxable revenue came to $763.5 million, which itself is an increase of 15%
• As for February, considered by some to be the most romantic month of 2023, the revenue was $712.46 million, while taxable revenue was $671 million - marking a 19% increase in both.
• However, March saw the first dip of the quarter. During this month, overall revenue dropped 3% to $724.58 million, while taxable revenue fell 1% to $685.5 million.

Q2 2023

In Q2 2023, ending June 30, Clark County reported collecting $290.47 million in taxes and other collections during this period. While this may sound like a lot, this is a 4% decrease, or $12.1 million, less than the amount collected in 2022.

• April 2023 was the strongest month during this period. The revenue for this period was $624.2 million, an increase of 5.3% from the year prior. This was also reflected in its taxable revenue total of $603.6 million, which was also up 2%.

• May was when the first slip-up of this month happened, with revenue down 2% when compared annually to $715.99m, but don’t worry, taxable revenue increased 3% to $694.87 million.
• The final month of the quarter, June 2023, saw a similar trend as May. The revenue was down 1% annually to $727.3 million, but the taxable revenue increased by 10% to $708.4 million.

Interestingly, a lot of the other statistics were down this quarter too. When looking at the individual games played, almost all of them saw a decrease too.

The GGR for 1-cent slots were down 15% to $334.5 million in Q2, 1-dollar slots dipped by 13% to a GGR of $93.8 million, and even baccarat dropped 15% to a GGR of $273.3 million.

• One of the only winners this quarter was Pai Gow, which exploded in popularity and saw a 104% increase up to $1.6 million in GGR.

Q3 2023

Past the halfway point of the year, what did the second half of the Las Vegas' numbers bring to the table? Q3 2023, ending September 30, saw Clark County bring in $246.2 million in taxes from the various casinos in the area. This is a 3.6% increase when compared to the same period from the year before, or a boost of $8.46 million.

• July 2023 saw GGR increase by 8% up to $834.9 million, which also drove up its taxable revenue amount by 1.7% to $730.1 million.
• As for August, the revenue saw a slightly more modest rise of 1% to $666.8 million, while the taxable revenue itself dropped 1.6% to $675.1 million. This was reflected by a lot of decreases in the slot vertical, with the 5-dollar slots up to the 100-dollar slots all seeing a drop of around 41%.
• Things turned around in September, as revenue rose 7% to $741.2 million, bringing with it a 3.5% increase of taxable revenue to $660 million.

The September revenue surge was no doubt spurred by an 88% increase in baccarat GGR, with the $147.4 million from this game alone, being succeeded only by the entire multi-denominational slots range and its $218.7 million.

Q4 2023

The final quarter of the year, and sadly, of this report too. The season of carol singing, mistletoe and overeating - but how much did the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip give in the gift of taxes? Well, with this quarter ending on December 31, the total tax collected by the Nevada Gaming Control Board for Clark County was $257.57 million, an increase of 6% when compared to the year prior.

• The first month of the festive period, October brought a relatively un-spooky GGR increase of 1.23% which saw the final figure at $714.48 million, while the taxable revenue was $672.28 million, which is up 6.79% from the year before!
• The second festive month, November, saw revenue shoot up by 22.6% to $821 million, which also brought up the taxable revenue amount to $701.36 million, a respectable 8% growth. This was thanks to the Formula 1 event, centered around the Strip, that took place during this month.
• Last, but most certainly not least, December’s GGR rose 11.2% up to $905.4 million, bringing with it $712.0 million in taxable revenue, a figure up 17.26% from December 2022.

Once again, this was carried by the baccarat fans - with a 50% increase in its GGR to $218.66 million, for the month of December, and an overall 82% increase to $486.77 million in GGR for the quarter.

Las Vegas Strip 2023 Tax Summary

• In total, the tax generated from Clark County casinos comes to an impressive $1.05 billion for the year!

While the GGR for the slots saw quite a steady fall on average through the year, this was counterbalanced by an upswing in baccarat players and revenue. This game is easy to learn and it has fair and open odds, so it’s understandable to see its growing popularity.

That’s probably not the only reason that it’s seen such a boom though. Baccarat has a notoriously low house edge of only 1.2%, which means that it’s also very popular with high-rollers. This is one of the reasons that many of the Las Vegas Strip casinos have a maximum limit of $150,000 per hand on the baccarat tables.

Did anyone actually predict that this game would be driving most of the revenue, and therefore taxes, on the Las Vegas Strip? Maybe you did, but for anyone outside of the US, baccarat is still a relatively unknown game.

Perhaps the focus shouldn’t be just about what we’ve learnt, but what the European casinos could learn from the Las Vegas ones. There have been plenty of comparisons already about the way the two countries operate casinos as resorts, against casinos as nightclubs, but after seeing the figures it’s difficult to ignore the power that baccarat has held, at least this year.

Will 2024 out-do 2023? How much would you bet?