July a cruel month for A.C. casinos

The summer season has been anything but good for Atlantic City.

Figures released Tuesday by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission confirmed the obvious: that table games in Pennsylvania would pose as another hit to Atlantic City's already shrinking revenues.

The 11 Shore gambling halls reported $363.9 million in revenue last month, a decrease of 5 percent from a year ago.

In what is traditionally one of the most profitable months of the year, all but two of the 11 casinos - Atlantic City Hilton and Trump Taj Mahal - reported revenue declines.

Even the market-leading Borgata, with its two-year-old Water Club hotel, reported a 0.6 percent decrease. The biggest revenue drop was at Resorts, one of the city's smallest gambling halls, which reported a 19.3 percent decrease.

The 11 Atlantic City casinos generated $252.9 million, or 69 percent of last month's total revenue, from slot machines. The rest, $111 million, came from table games.

A lot of the Shore town's woes have been attributed to the new casinos across the border, which added table games early last month.

By comparison, last week's figures from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board showed that the state received a record $116 million in slot machine tax revenues last month; a 17.8 percent increase over a year ago.

With casino revenues in free fall, Gov. Christie announced a plan July 21 that would create a state entity to take over Atlantic City's tourism and casino district.

His proposals include keeping all gambling revenue collected by the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority for projects in Atlantic City, better marketing of Atlantic City as a brand, and boosting the city's convention business to 30 percent a year over the next five years.

On Monday, the Pennsylvania House Gaming Oversight Committee held an informational hearing to find out how table games were playing out in the state.

The committee chairman, Rep. Dante Santoni, said that in less than a month of operation, table games had created 4,460 jobs and were helping to boost the state's property tax relief fund.

"So far, table games have been very good for Pennsylvania," said Santoni (D., Berks). "They have put more than 4,000 people to work and increased tourism, which means more dollars going into the general fund so we can continue providing important services to Pennsylvanians without raising taxes."

Revenue figures for Pennsylvania table games won't be available until after Aug. 20.

By comparison, thousands of casino jobs - 8,800 since 2007 - have been pared from Atlantic City because of declining revenues brought on by the competition in Pennsylvania.

In 2006, the 11 Atlantic City casinos grossed $5.2 billion. Last year, they made $3.9 billion.

For the first seven months of the year, the Atlantic City casinos made $2.14 billion, down 7.9 percent from the same period in 2009.