The Missing Casino Guest Did Not Stop Gambling

Jefferies Equity Research analyst David Katz found January 2025 casino visits flat with 2024 and 13.6 percent below 2019, with spend per guest a bit higher than six years earlier. The rest of 2025, then a choppy 2026, showed that mix was the business, not a snow-month fluke.

Regional floors kept a smaller, higher-value guest. Sportsbooks and iGaming took the casual trip. Commercial gaming still printed record revenue, even as Placer-tracked foot traffic stayed well short of the old crowd.

Katz’s January Note Held for the Rest of 2025

In a February 10, 2025 investor note, Katz called the January print neutral to slightly negative for Boyd Gaming, Churchill Downs, Caesars Entertainment, Monarch Casino Resorts, and Penn Entertainment. Bad weather, he wrote, hurt the month, and Boyd casinos saw a 9.3 percent sag in foot traffic. Ohio visits were down 3.5 percent from January 2024, Pennsylvania 3.8 percent.

Atlantic City slumped 7 percent year over year and 11.5 percent versus 2019. Illinois was off 12.9 percent from the prior January and 8 percent from 2019. Detroit rose 3.8 percent on the year and still sat 30.6 percent below its 2019 headcount. Kentucky, crowded with new gambling parlors, was up 2.3 percent, with no clean 2019 comparison.

Katz said Caesars drew half its revenue from regional casinos and Boyd was 56 percent tied to those properties. He looked for Churchill Downs to grow from new Kentucky and Virginia outposts, then cautioned that The Rose Gaming Resort “appears to be off to a slow start.” He also warned that insurance, utilities, and labor would press results even if traffic settled.

We anticipate trends will continue to stabilize and potentially improve in 2025, as comparisons have started to ease vs. prior-year levels.

David Katz, Jefferies Equity Research, February 10, 2025 investor note

They settled into a lower groove. They did not climb back to 2019.

A Year of Fewer Feet and Steady Win

Katz kept reading Placer movement around regional properties through the year. May was the only clear year-over-year gain, up 2.3 percent, and it was still 9.2 percent short of May 2019. February was the weakest month, down 14.3 percent from 2024. July reversed the spring calm, down 9.9 percent and 19.9 percent below 2019, even as spend per visitor rose again and operators told him trends were “OK.”

KATZ’S 2025 REGIONAL TRAFFIC PRINTS

October had the most traffic of 2025 because it carried an extra weekend day, and it was still down 2.8 percent from 2024 and 14.9 percent from 2019. November, the third-best month by volume, was down 1.7 percent year over year and 15.1 percent from 2019. Through November, attendance was trending down 4.8 percent from 2024.

Katz kept repeating that regional gross gaming revenue had been strong since late spring. The bodies were the lagging number. Revenue was not.

Where the Missing Casino Visits Went

The missing guest did not leave gambling. The American Gaming Association’s State of the States 2026 report put 2025 commercial gaming revenue at $78.62 billion, up 9.1 percent, with 34 of 38 states plus the District of Columbia setting records. America’s 493 commercial casinos booked record $51.06 billion in casino games, only 2.3 percent more than 2024.

Sports betting and iGaming grew an order of magnitude faster. Commercial sportsbooks took $16.89 billion, up 22.6 percent, on a sports betting handle of $166.94 billion in the association’s revenue tracker. iGaming across the seven legal states reached $10.73 billion, up 27.6 percent. Direct gaming taxes were $17.86 billion, up 12.3 percent. In 2019, before the phone products scaled, commercial gaming as a whole had been $43.61 billion, up 3.7 percent that year.

HOW 2025 COMMERCIAL GAMING BROKE APART

• Land-based games: $51.06 billion, up 2.3 percent, still the largest slice and barely moving.
• Sports betting: $16.89 billion, up 22.6 percent, the first place a casual bettor now opens an app.
• iGaming: $10.73 billion, up 27.6 percent, with Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania still about 90 percent of the total.
• The tax take: $17.86 billion in direct gaming taxes, up 12.3 percent, which is why statehouses can cheer even when parking lots look thinner.

AGA president and CEO Bill Miller called the year “exceptional results for consumers, operators, and the communities we serve.” That is true of the wallet. It is a stretch if the measure is the 2019 crowd walking through a regional porte-cochere.

Rated players still make the drive, stay longer, and spend more per trip, which is why a down traffic month can still print a decent win. Unrated locals skip the Tuesday slot run and open a sportsbook instead. Empty-casino talk overstates the print, because the people who do show up still sit down. The lost volume is the weekday drop-in, and that drop-in now lives on a phone.

iGaming Passed Retail Slots in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is the cleanest specimen, because the state publishes every vertical. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board put 2025 combined gaming revenue at $6,796,211,719, up 10.74 percent from $6,137,089,054. Taxes and the slot-license operation fee returned $2,981,246,257 to the commonwealth.

Pennsylvania iGaming revenue of $2.78 billion ($2,775,554,529) rose 27.22 percent from $2,181,669,449 and passed retail slots. Slot machines at the casinos took $2,432,109,649. Table games took $925,406,724. Sports wagering took $602,495,582.

PENNSYLVANIA’S 2025 WALLET SPLIT

• iGaming: $2.78 billion, now the largest single product, with Hollywood Casino at Penn National’s partners alone at $1,055,489,205.
• Retail slots: $2.43 billion, still huge and no longer first.
• Retail tables: $925.4 million, which keeps slots-plus-tables at $3.36 billion, about $582 million ahead of iGaming.
• Sports wagering: $602.5 million, another slice that never has to cross a casino driveway.

Katz’s Pennsylvania traffic even recovered. November visits were up 2.5 percent from 2024 and 28.9 percent above late 2019. The state can add bodies and still watch the extra dollar go online, which is the tell. A healthier parking lot did not put iGaming back in second place.

Atlantic City and Detroit Still Trail 2019

Other rooms never got the old crowd back. Katz’s December 9 note, wrapping November, left a sharp spread across the map he has tracked since that January print.

NOVEMBER 2025 VERSUS 2019 AND 2024

Katz blamed New Hampshire for Massachusetts, downtown construction for Detroit, and a mix of new openings, gray-game parlors, and renovations for the rest. Illinois comparisons were messy all year because new casinos kept entering the set. Atlantic City’s hole versus 2019 widened from 11.5 percent in January to 18.3 percent in November. Detroit crawled in from 30.6 percent down to 27.6 percent down, which is still a lost third of the old traffic.

Black Hawk, Colorado, jumped 15.9 percent in November, a reminder that a new or expanded resort can still buy visits. Katz had liked Monarch’s expanded Black Hawk property as far back as the January note, when that market was down 2.4 percent. Supply still moves people. It does not restore 2019 as a national baseline.

The Cost Squeeze Katz Flagged in January

Higher spend per visitor is not the same as a fatter margin. Katz flagged insurance, utilities, and labor on February 10, and the companies most tied to regional floors spent 2025 living with that math.

Churchill Downs 2025 gaming results show how the split looks inside one operator. Company revenue rose 7.0 percent to $2,925.9 million, and adjusted EBITDA rose 4.0 percent to $1,205.3 million. Net income fell 10.3 percent to $383.0 million. The gaming segment’s adjusted EBITDA was $483.0 million, down 4.7 percent. Gaming net revenue was $1,042.9 million, barely above $1,039.1 million. Same-store wholly owned casino margins, excluding racing, fell 0.8 points, which the company tied largely to Mississippi.

The growth sat in historical racing machines in Kentucky and Virginia, the same outposts Katz had been watching. By December he favored Churchill Downs again, citing The Rose, Roseshire in Virginia, Salem in New Hampshire, and planned electronic table games in Kentucky. The slow start at The Rose did not stay slow. It also did not turn the older regional casino segment into a growth engine.

Katz closed that December note by joining other analysts worrying about Caesars Entertainment’s regional master lease, writing that “pressures of lease coverage against share losses have become prominent.” A floor that sees fewer people and a slightly richer spend still has to pay the light bill, the premium, and the rent.

April 2026 Punched a Hole in the Cushion

The 2026 calendar opened with the same January weather story Katz had written a year earlier, then a spring month that finally knocked revenue off the spend-more cushion.

THE PRINTS AFTER THE 2025 FILE

1. January 2026: J.P. Morgan analyst Daniel Politzer put regional visitation down 5.4 percent in winter storms and still projected casino winnings up 2 percent. Katz counted 12 states under federal emergency declarations, including seven with casinos (Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Virginia, and West Virginia), and put regional gaming revenue down 3 to 5 percent.
2. January and February 2026: Politzer’s regional grosses came in up 4.3 percent and 4.4 percent, at or above his forecasts, so the extra spend per remaining guest still covered a bad traffic month.
3. April 2026: Visits at 17 regional properties, excluding Atlantic City, New Orleans, and high-end rooms, fell 8.3 percent. Politzer extrapolated about a 3 percent dip in gaming grosses even though April had the same eight weekend days as April 2025 and tax refunds were running ahead in size.
4. April 2026 in New Jersey: Casino-hotel win was $235.6 million, up 11.7 percent from $211.0 million. The New Jersey April internet gaming win was $263.1 million, up 11.9 percent from $235.2 million, so the phone product out-earned the nine casino hotels that month.
5. July 2026: The AGA tracker had traditional casino gaming up 3.1 percent to $4.48 billion, with commercial gaming as a whole up 8.6 percent, as sports betting got a World Cup lift.

Politzer wrote that April “suggests trends a touch below typical seasonality.” Refund volume was up 6 percent and the average refund was up 11 percent, with about $430 billion in 2026 refunds, but only 73 percent of that money had arrived versus 81 percent a year earlier. The extra dollar per visitor is real until the remaining visitors stay home too.

Katz spent June 6 to 9, 2026, in Las Vegas and came back cautious on Strip leisure even as conventions helped nighttime play. He still preferred regional names to the Strip for modest near-term growth, the same ranking he had given in 2025. Station Casinos was his favored stock on that trip. Boyd and Station both told him they expected some downward pressure into late 2026, not a collapse into 2027.

The January 2025 note was never a weather story. It was the first month a national reader could see the new regional casino clearly: fewer cars, a richer average guest, a phone product growing several times faster, and a cost base that eats part of the gain. April 2026 was the month that average guest did not quite cover the empty spaces.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of publicly discussed casino traffic, revenue, and operator results, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell any security, or a forecast of future earnings for Boyd Gaming, Caesars Entertainment, Churchill Downs, Monarch Casino Resorts, Penn Entertainment, or any other company named. Readers who are considering securities should consult a licensed financial adviser and review official filings before acting. Traffic prints, revenue totals, and outlooks reflect the analyst notes, regulator releases, and company exhibits cited here and can change with later months.