Last year, British Columbia experienced a stall in the revenue growth of its biggest casinos. This was majorly caused by the change in regulations of the Canadian money laundering sector.
Business in Vancouver conducted a survey of the company’s twenty biggest casinos. This uncovered a revenue increase of C$79.7 million in 2014 to C$85.6 million in 2018. However, the 2018 figure presented an increase of 0.1% which is a major flop compared to the annual growth of 4.4% recorded back in 2014.
For casinos with table games and slot machines, the revenue for slot machines registered an increase while the table share depicted a decline. Slot’s share in 2018 registered an increase from 2014’s 71.3% to 79.1%. The table share fell from 28.7% to 20.3% last year.
The decline in the table games’ revenue depicts the current annual report that the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) had released. According to the calvinayre.com, this report entailed the revenue from brick and mortar casinos owned by the province and managed by private companies.
In a 12 month period that ended on March 31st, the revenue was a flat C$1.9 billion. The slots’ share increased by 2.6%, while the table games’ share declined by 7.8% from last year’s figure.
BC casinos were required to comply with a stricter source of funds regulation for transactions that are more than C$10,000 since January of the previous year. With this change in place, there were many reports on non-commitment to the anti-money laundering regulations by the Vancouver-are casinos such as the Great Canadian Gaming. The casino is managed by the River Rock Casino Resort.
According to BIV stats, River Rock leads all the BC casinos with its total revenue of C$323.7 million last year. The figure is a 22.9% drop from 2014’s revenue. Despite of that, River Rock’s tables are one of the top-five casinos which scored the highest table revenue with an average of $1.7 million per table.
Burnaby’s Grand Villa Casino ranked second while Parq Vancouver ranked third. Cascades Casino Langley took the fourth place while Hard Rock Casino Vancouver was fifth in the gaming revenue rank.
Parq which is downtown core’s only casino struggled to plow back profits since September 2017. Luckily for the casino, it was able to pick up new partner equity which was willing to refinance the massive loans it owes. The partnership was officiated this spring.
Although Parq has 75 tables and 600 slots only as per the local by-laws, these gaming positions are performing exceptionally well. With half the slots compared to rivals, Parq’s slots earned C$145,741 higher than all the top five casinos. Unlike the others, the casino generated more revenue from tables than the slot machines.
The revenue from slots and the tables are expected to decline further following the BCLC’s new PlayPlanner which is a time and budgeting tool. PlayPlanner will allow players to set time and spending limits.
The tool also generates notifications to alert players that their pre-set limits are almost up. BCLC has had similar tools since 2004.
