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Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008 | 6:19 p.m.
The U.S. gaming industry will remain under significant pressure in 2009 and will likely recover in 2010, according Fitch Ratings, a global credit ratings agency.
In a Tuesday report, Fitch said the gaming industry this year experienced a greater effect from difficult financial conditions for consumers than many investors had expected.
Fitch expects overall consumer spending to drop by 1.6 percent in 2009 and remain soft until 2010.
With the recent decline in gas prices and reductions in airline capacity and international demand, the report says regional and local markets will fare better than destination markets, such as Las Vegas and the Strip.
The report indicates the gaming industry will be “more economically sensitive than in previous downturns, which clearly was exhibited in the past year.”
Pure speculation. Who can see the future?
Anyone who gets paid for it
Fitch is a reliable and respected market and financial evaluation service. They should not be simply dismissed as some do. The prediction actually is almost too easy to make about 2009, but they are not alone about 2010.
Maryland recently voted Nov 4 for a massive slots industry. The money was going primarily to education. Then in a few weeks gaming industry leaders declared they needed more profit than the law allowed. Maybe that is just hot air and to get a bigger chunk of education's share when educators had swallowed hard and endorsed it. Taxpayers may feel cheated, but gaming is going to stay in a slump a while. Fitch agrees. My bosses in higher education ( I am a lifelong professor of marketing) meanwhile have to eat crow for having endorsed slots and rallied tens of thousands to vote for getting the money that is not there.
I was just watching Donald Trump talking about the top 15 prognosticators last year predicting the dow would be anywhere from 16000 to 18000 now.
I have to listen to people who can't get the weekend forecast correct on Thursday night tell me what the climate is going to be 30 years from now.
Talk is cheap and these kind of forecasts are not worth the paper they are written on.
My wife and I just returned home from Las Vegas, We had a wonderful stay at the "The Palazzo".
It was a beautiful suite facing Las Vegas Blvd.
I could not beleive what I was seeing on Las Vegas Blvd. There was very little traffic on Las Vegas Blvd.
If it were not for the Taxi's, Commercial Vehicles, moving signboards traffic would be nil.
It was a pleasure to drive from one end of the "Strip" to the other.
From our window at the "Palazzo" we could actually count the non-commercial vehicles with a lull between cars.
I have only seen Las Vegas in this condition one other time. This was at the Comdex show in 2001.
This was right after 9-11.
I have a photo looking North from "Mandalay Bay" with no moving vehicles in sight.
The Casino's are like tombs. The slot attendants were milling around in groups.
Most of the Blackjack tables were empty. The only game in town that was running at full steam was the live poker tables.
That action is not enough to keep a casino going. That does not even pay for the light bill.
I predict that we will see a alternate closing of casinos on certain days to hold back Chapter 11 proceedings. It is sad but it is true.
Las Vegas will not be the same again for at least (3) years or more.
Gone is the festive pesonna of old Vegas.
It looks like the Indian's have won this war without firing a (Bow)