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Comment by tetrep | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that a small minority of a casino's users are responsible for the bulk of their revenue and if you take a small leap of faith and assume that many or most of that subset of users are gambling addicts, you can see how a casino might be heavily incentivized to need to be operational again quickly before their addicts seek a new source of gambling.

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Bulk of their revenue comes from non-gambling. 69.8% of casinos revenue is non-gambling. [1] For gambling revenue, slots are responsible for 67%. [2] I doubt that it is a small minority that is gambling away at thousands and thousands of the slot machines.

[1] https://igamingbusiness.com/casino/more-bullishness-for-las-...

[2]https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2023/02/01/nevada-...

You would be surprised. Most casual gamblers will put <$1k on a weekend visit.

Even setting aside the high roller slots, the regular machines will allow $25/spin now and 5 seconds a spin means it’s easy to cruise through $1k in 5 minutes.

I’ve sat and watched one person so that (not in the high roller slots) and they left down about $4000 after a 20 minute sit. They didn’t even seem phased in the slightest and only left due to what seemed like the need to meet someone rather than running out of cash.

First, a trip to Vegas for most of Americans will cost much more than a $1K per weekend. Second, my link said exactly this - most of the revenue comes from slots. People using them are by definition is not a small minority. Minority gambles away hundreds of thousands per trip.

> First, a trip to Vegas for most of Americans will cost much more than a $1K per weekend

I’m talking about gambling amount. You’re intuition is way off here. Most Americans will not gamble that much.

I think there is a misunderstanding here. My point is that gambling is less important part of casino's revenue. Hence few whales don't make or break Vegas.

I.e even if we take the top of your guess (<$1000), it is still much less than other expenses (lodging, dining, entertainment, etc).

I’m replying to your claim about doubting a small minority gamble thousands at slot machines. Your intuition is wrong and whales dominate gambling revenue, even in slot machines.

Whales are important, but I expect most Vegas casinos rely on income from the masses. Otherwise they wouldn't be as big as they are.

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