Summary:
- Casinos earned just over $93 million.
- The decrease was more than 9% from last year.
- The revenues are the lowest earned since 2005.
Casino revenues dropped around 9.1% for the month, much lower than the $103.4 million earned in 2023.
This is the lowest monthly total the Detroit area has seen since June 2005, aside from being affected by COVID-19 or work strikes.
For the month, Michigan was able to take in $7.6 million, which is around $765,000 less than in 2023. The city saw around $11 million in receipts, which is over $5 million less than last year. Each casino in Detroit reported a year-over-year decline.
MGM Grand was down just over 11% with $44.6 million in earnings, while the MotorCity Casino dropped over 10% with $27.1 million. Greektown Casino saw the lowest loss with 2.9% and $22.2 million in earnings.
The earnings are even more disastrous when looking at month-to-month totals. MotorCity dropped over 21%, while Greektown was down more than 14%. MGM Grand dropped almost 12%. The major decreases are a hit to the 2024 totals and could signify things to come.
It is unclear what caused the major decrease in earnings. Was it fewer visitors or perhaps the economy that has caused players to stop visiting the gaming venues as much? It is not a good start to 2024 and maybe a sign that Detroit casinos will struggle to bring in positive numbers this year.
Sportsbooks Do Well for January
While the casinos were down and out this January, the sportsbooks of Detroit were on the up and up. The three casino sportsbooks saw over $24 million in handle for January. This was a huge jump from 2023, up by over 58%.
The city has a 2.2% hold on bets, and despite this, the casinos were able to see over 248% better revenues than in January 2023. Winners were decreased a bit by Greektown Casino, which had to pay over $1 million to betters, but it was a good month overall for sports betting totals.
Players seemed to be more interested in sports betting at the Detroit casinos than casino gaming, like slots and blackjack. MotorCity Casino offers sports betting via FanDuel, and they brought in almost $1.2 million in earnings. This was the first time the casino earned $1 million in revenues from sports betting since 2020.
All eyes will be on Detroit in the coming months to see if the casinos can recover and bring in more earnings than the bad start to the year they saw in January.
About the Author
