First quarter revenue slips OTY; same-store $ down three First quarter revenue slips OTY; same-store $ down three
Through the first three months of 2026, statewide win of $598,859,896 at Indiana’s 13 commercial casino properties is down by $8,003,485 (- 1.32%) from $606,863,381 during the same quarter in 2025. The figure is also up by only about $4.4 million from the first quarter of 2024 which had featured only 12 casinos.
First quarter revenue has been down from the prior year now in two of the past three years, with Q1 2025 artificially inflated by the addition of the Terre Haute Casino Resort, which was not yet open in the first quarter of 2024.
If you subtract the Vigo County casino’s contribution of $34,172,684 from the 2026 numbers (spot on the 2025 Q1 TH numbers), the adjusted win of $564,687,212 ($572,681,192 last year) would have been the lowest since the pre-Covid era, so we’re not seeing any organic growth of substance in same-unit revenues. You can attribute that to the contracting economy, expansion in surrounding states, the growth in sports wagering, and the popularity of other entertainment options more appealing to a changing demographic.
In 2024, one year after we had marked the first three-year streak of (pandemic-aided) over-the-year growth in first quarter revenues since a foundational run ended in 2007, we seemed to be turning in the opposite direction. From 2007 until the 2021-23 streak, the casinos had not been able to even muster consecutive year gains in the always-important Q1, and 2017-20 had seen the longest first quarter over-the-year stretch of shortfalls in state history.
In 2023, the state’s best first quarter in a decade – since 2013 (the downtown Cincinnati land-based casino debuted early in March of that year) – had offered hope that the state would be back on track for improved performance, particularly given that the major renovations at Harrah’s Hoosier Park Racing & Casino had ended in December 2023, and the upgrades were fully operational in the first quarter of 2024 (though the Terre Haute addition would not debut – as scheduled – until the second quarter of 2025).
Alas, further improvement was not in the cards.
While the $632,672,793 in Q1 2025 revenue was an increase over the year and welcome in isolation, it was truly wind-aided thanks to the inclusion of a full three months of revenue from Terre Haute, dollars that had not been part of the picture in 2024. We will concede, however, that this quarter also included new competition for the Chicagoland casino dollars from the Chicago area (south suburbs and well up north in Waukegan) but we’ll posit that this had less of a detrimental impact on the statewide revenues than the January, February, and March additions to the state bottom line from the new Vigo County casino. Those two casinos continued to expand amenities from Q1 2025 through Q1 2026, exacerbating the difference.
In 2022 and 2023 we saw the first two consecutive first quarters of win topped $600 million (they actually exceeded $625 million) for the first time since 2012-13, following the two worst back-to-back first quarters (2020 and 2021) the state had endured since 2001 and 2002, a period when the state was still requiring casino vessels to cruise, and the state had three fewer casinos.
Each month of the 2023 first quarter produced the best revenue the state had seen in that month since 2013, except March 2023 numbers, which fail to top those of March 2022. During Q1 2024, however, each month landed south of each corresponding month since 2021, when patrons were going stir-crazy after the pandemic protocols started to be rolled back, and vaccines were becoming more readily available to adult age cohorts. In 2025, January and March were more lucrative than in 2024, but February 2024 topped February 2025 revenues.
You would have to go back to January 2022 to find any month of the first quarter of 2026 top the equivalent month in any prior year. Beyond that, you have to discount for the Covid issues to locate a current quarter month that is more lucrative than earlier equivalents.
Going back to that first quarter of 2013 that we just noted above . . . had the 2019 first quarter had not found itself shortened by two weeks in March due to the pandemic, that quarter would also have likely been the most profitable since the Ohio casino contingent was complete – and it also likely would have continued a 12-year streak in which February and March showed improvement over the prior month. After 2019 and 2020 failed to maintain that run, we saw the positive trend begin anew in 2022 before reversing again in 2023 and failing to regain steam in 2025 and 2026.
So, you may ask, why should you be so interested in first-quarter numbers?
As we gently remind you each April, Q1 is a particularly important quarter – probably the key quarter each year – for Indiana’s gaming properties.
Casinos in the Midwest region have traditionally expected to post their top revenue quarter of the year in the January – March period – assuming weather does not trend significantly worse than the norm.
Weather played a negative part in the 2024 first quarter, particularly with lengthy snow emergencies in LaPorte County and to a lesser extent in Lake County, weather is frequently a factor in Q1 revenues – and usually to the detriment of revenues (remember everyone cursing Mother Nature back in 2004 and again in 2014?) – and there were fingers pointing to cold temperatures midway through the first quarter of 2025 cooling off attendance in The Region, in particular. Weather during the 2026 first quarter included some substantial snow, but also included a lengthy stretch of unseasonably warm weather, potentially evening out the good and the bad.
That Q1 was the critical quarter of the year for revenue generation had been conventional wisdom among casino general managers – until at least six or seven years ago.
But given interviews with casino general managers in the mainstream media concerning March revenue in the post-Covid years of 2022 and in 2023, and other signals we’ve picked up again more recently, we believe that old rule of thumb about the uber-importance seems to have returned as part of Hoosier conventional wisdom.
Note as well that the quarter may gain a day’s worth of revenue in a year in which February has 29 days (such as we enjoyed in 2024), and can also be affected by the number of weekend days in the quarter and where the New Year’s Day holiday falls in the week.
Here is how Q1 casino win has ranked across history (note that we didn’t round out our “full” 10-boat complement of casinos until the first quarter of 2001):
And if you’re interested as to how each year fared ranked by how first quarter win fueled total annual win, this table should help sate that curiosity. Note that as recently as 2020, first quarter win accounted for almost one-third of the entire annual win – thanks to the numbers being skewed by Covid – while the following year served up the lowest contribution of Q1 to the entire year (for a year in which at least 10 casinos were active all year), also due to the phase-out of Covid protocols later in that year.
Some of the quarters (and years) may also have been impacted by Covid closures, the emergence from the lockdown, and ultimately the widespread availability of the Covid vaccine and complete repeal of Covid protocols.
Most recently, the first quarter of 2025, as we’ve noted, was assisted by the inclusion of revenue from the Terre Haute Casino Resort which was not yet open in the first quarter of 2024.
March, in particular, you will see below, is invariably the best month of Q1 (save 2020 when it was the sole month affected by the pandemic shutdown) as you will see from the table below (in which we have shaded quarters in which each month is down from the same month in the prior-year quarter), and typically one of the best months of the year for any property, regardless of geography.
To use a few negatives, since at least 2002, March has never not been the best month of the first quarter, save the shutdown month of March in 2020 (and if you simply doubled that figure to account for the closed 16 days of the month, it would still be tops for that jarring year’s Q1).
While March 2025 included Terre Haute for the first time, March 2024 was also aided by the $42.6 million in revenue collected at Hard Rock, a record for any casino in any month for Gary. By contrast, the top performance by Hard Rock during Q1 2026 is $38,968,343 for the most recent month, March 2026.
After the first quarter of 2016 interrupted a depressing three-year losing streak (2016 was also the last time in which all three months of Q1 saw growth over the corresponding month in the prior year), 2017 results took a step back, 2018 dipped further, and (despite a new land-based option and live dealers at the racinos) 2019 took an even longer stride backward – and then Covid-19 shuttered the casinos for the 2020 first quarter as of March 16, ensuring that the rebound trajectory would not be sustained. While Q1 2019 was flat-out lousy, it still stands out as better than the subsequent two first quarters due to the exigent circumstances.
While the January – March 2015 period marked the first time since 2003 in which none of the months in the first quarter hit $200 million, we managed to cross the $200 million Rubicon again in March 2016, and sustained that one-month March trend in each first quarter since – until the Covid-caused shutdown in March 2020 interrupted the streak, only to be resumed in 2021, despite the persistent pandemic problems (even though it was the lowest full month of March since 2017). March 2022 win of $235 million put an exclamation point on March (and the first quarter) making an emphatic return to normal, and while March 2023 and 2024 numbers failed to sustain the over-the-year growth, the months of January and February were able to boost the Q1 numbers above the comparables for the past several years – until 2024.
Looking back even a decade before the pandemic – from the first full year of the financial crisis in 2009 through the Covid-truncated Q1 of 2020 – nine of the 12 first quarters experienced revenue declines from the prior-year quarter. As we’ve noted above, we then experienced a trio of successive Q1s with growth in win over the prior year . . . a phenomenon that we had not enjoyed since 2007 (and before then, we had not seen any Q1 over-the-year decline), but did not last through the first three months of 2024 – but that proved unsustainable in 2025 and again in 2026.
When you add up the actual Q1 revenue over the same prior-year quarters, the amount tallied across the past four first quarters is the highest of any four-year growth period since 2013 – and you can perform the same exercise for the prior four first quarters – but some of that is wind-aided, thanks to comparisons with pandemic shutdowns and post-pandemic restrictions.
By comparison, 17 years ago during the first quarter of 2009 – a period theoretically depressed by the impact of the global fiscal crisis – January through March win of $714,277,954 that year was not only a record for the quarter in Indiana history, but also $165.86 million (23.22%) more than during the first quarter of 2019. But you must note that the 2009 first quarter didn’t quite resemble the competitive environment Indiana’s properties face off against today (not to mention the economic and demographic challenges).
Not only was Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana just an inchoate dream on the part of Gary city leaders in 2009, that period also did not include competition from Chicagoland’s top casino, Rivers Casino, which wasn’t in operation until 2011; the 18-month-old Bally’s temporary casino in Chicago’s River North; the fancy new Wind Creek Chicago Southland Casino, a quick bike ride from Indiana’s Lake County border; some 48,700 VLTs in Illinois that didn’t debut until a dozen years ago; a casino in Danville, Illinois, just across the state line on I-70 (and sited within a chip’s throw of legal recreational cannabis dispensaries) the four land-based casinos and seven racinos in Ohio; historical horse racing machines close by in Louisville, Ellis Park, Owensboro, and Greater Northern Kentucky; and the Four Winds Casino in South Bend that now offers live table games.
In contrast to the record first quarter revenue of $714.278 million earned in 2009, Q1 revenue in 2026 is down by $115.418 million, a 16.16% reduction from the apogee.
At this juncture back in 2015, we opined that “The state’s failure to make a first quarter recovery is far more problematic than most people realize, particularly as it seems to result from a combination of tough to resolve factors.”
As we (so sagely!) noted slightly more than a decade ago, we likely won’t find ourselves recovering to such lofty levels given the rise of competition around us and hard economic considerations (there are only so many discretionary dollars that Hoosiers and our neighbors have to spend on gambling when there are so many other entertainment options . . . and prices rise for everyday goods and services), as well as diminishing consumer confidence on both the short-term and in the long-run.
There is also the specter of increasing competition for those lucrative Chicagoland pocketbooks from the $529 million Wind Creek Chicago Southland located about as many steps from the Indiana border as a cocktail server takes every day – and we have yet to see the comparative-quarter impact of its recently-opened 255-room luxury hotel tower, which looks down at Indiana.
All of this is not to say, of course, that the continued improved performance of Gary’s Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana (and potential for considerable new revenue from a convention center and hotel), other property improvements elsewhere, and a potential casino for Northeast Indiana could help draw us incrementally closer to the glory days of gaming in the Hoosier State.
But recall that we’re now competing against the litany of assorted operations we described to you a few paragraphs ago.
The competitive life (and economic environment) is decidedly different than it was just 10 or 15 years ago, and even the bounce we enjoyed from retail and mobile sports wagering has quickly been eroded by market creep in Illinois, an entire new industry in Ohio, and a hit from sports wagering landing in Kentucky, where historical horse racing machines are also having an impact across from the entire Ohio River contingent of Hoosier casino properties. We’re also facing the prospect of VLTs joining the fray in Chicago.
Five years ago, as we had emerged from the cloud of Covid, we demonstrated to you that most of the Indiana casino properties turned in their respective best first quarters in either 2013 or 2022, with a few outliers that were easily explained away.
Some of those casinos which had seen their new glory days in 2013 were still able to grow their revenues in 2023, but after four properties posted their respective best Q1 performances in 2023, only one now did so in 2024, Hard Rock, which has improved its performance in each of its four first quarters of operation. No casinos in operation last year were able to claim the first quarter of 2025 as their zenith, as the best first quarters seem largely to be in the past. Terre Haute wasn’t even able to grow win from its first-ever first quarter of operations in 2025 (the casino opened in April 2024).
Ameristar Casino East Chicago and Horseshoe Casino Hammond turned in their lowest Q1 numbers in 2024 . . . and fell even further in Q1 2025 and Q1 2026 as Hard Rock continues to run roughshod over the Lake Michigan properties (although with not as much dominance as in the most recent years); Rivers Casino continues to serve as the Chicagoland leader; and the new Bally’s Chicago temporary facility and the newer Wind Creek Chicago Southland property also help to incrementally chip into some of the Northwest Indiana numbers. Q1 2024 was also the first full quarter during which the new hotel tower at Four Winds Casino South Bend was open for the full first quarter.
Belterra Casino Resort had seen its Q1 low 2024 eclipsed by a further decline in Q1 2025, but Q1 2026 saw improvement in Switzerland County.
French Lick Resort Casino and Terre Haute Casino Resort also post new lows for Q1 in 2026.
And here is how each casino has performed across the past six first quarters (note the minimal difference in rank order from one year earlier; only Ameristar Casino East Chicago and Hollywood Casino Lawrenceburg flipped positions):
