Actual data on 2020 performance for Indian casinos continues to be limited due to reporting lags and timing differences. Many states report on state fiscal year calendars, typically July to June, meaning the 2020 fiscal year covers only through June of last year. Even the federal fiscal calendar leaves the period from October to year-end for 2020 excluded. Some information is available on a monthly or annual basis through the actual end of calendar-year 2020, but it is limited. Reporting lags further complicate the process. Even though Arizona’s fiscal year reporting covers the period through June of last year, lags in the timing of revenue reports meant that the effects of spring closures of Arizona Indian casinos will not actually be reported until fiscal 2021 data is released. The data that is available shows a range of impacts from the pandemic that, while all negative, vary considerably in intensity. According to Connecticut data, Foxwoods Casino had machine win for calendar-year 2020 that was down 36.8 percent from 2019. Mohegan Sun had machine win in 2020 that was down 30.2 percent from 2019. Net win for New Mexico casinos reported by the state for the first nine months of 2020 was down 57.5 percent from the first nine months of 2019. For the period from April through June of 2020, New Mexico Indian casino net win was down 93.5 percent. Published data for Michigan Indian casinos is incomplete, only reported through mid- August of last year. However, calendar year data for Detroit’s three commercial casinos shows a revenue decline of 57.3 percent. Oklahoma’s fiscal 2020 (June 2020) report showed a 16.5 percent decline in tribal exclusivity fees. While not a clean indicator of Indian gaming revenue, the receipts of the California Revenue Sharing Trust Fund in fiscal 2020 (June 2020) were down 16.3 percent from the prior fiscal year. At the end of 2019, prior to the start for the pandemic, 213 Indian casinos had one or more connected or directly associated hotels comprising a total of 55,266 rooms. As already mentioned, the pandemic and associated mitigation efforts have had an even more severe effect on ancillary facilities at Indian casinos than on the gaming floor. Smith Travel Research, the preeminent source of lodging industry performance data, maintains a survey of hotels across the U.S. that includes roughly 12 percent of those hotel rooms. While the sample size is too small and non-random to qualify as a statistically reliable performance measure, it is at least indicative of the size of the impact on Indian casinos hotels from the pandemic. According to the Smith Travel survey, annual occupancy for the Indian casino hotels participating was down 17.3 percentage points in 2020 from 64.1 percent in 2019 to 46.8 percent in 2020. Average room rates were also down, from $115.34 in 2019 to $107.21 in 2020. The net result was a 32.1 percent decline in total room revenue for the year. Of course, lower occupancy in their associated hotels not only means a loss of ancillary revenue for Indian casinos, it means a loss of gaming revenue as well. The graph on the following page compares monthly revenue per available room for the participating casino hotels for 2019 and 2020.
∴ TRIBAL GOVERNMENT GAMING
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