By james art 
Deutsche Bank analyst Carlo Santarelli is the go-to guy in gaming these days. His opinions on the Las Vegas Strip and such major corporations as Las Vegas Sands, MGM Resorts, Wynn Resorts, Boyd Gaming, Churchill Downs, Penn Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment are closely followed by investors, other analysts and the corporations themselves. Santarelli is the modern 21stSt-A later version of Jason Ader.
Ader was the man of the 90s. Like Santarelli, Ader followed the games closely and offered opinions that ended up being quotable. Ader’s opinions have also caught the attention of operators, who believe Ader understands the gaming industry better than most. He has participated in this position in other industry opportunities. He later became a major investor and is still on the fringes of the industry in some investments.
Santarelli is still a working analyst. He joined Deutsche Bank in 2011. after seven years with another company. His focus has always been play. The industry needs intelligent educational observers to help it see trends amid the bewildering mass of detail.
A friend of mine was a mathematician in his youth. After earning a degree in mathematics in London, he came to the United States and earned an accounting degree. While working as an intern at a casino, he decided the industry was right for him. My friend said it’s an industry built around statistics, but few people understand statistics. Now with big data sets, player tracking systems and artificial intelligence, the industry has more sophisticated statistical capability, but still struggles to make sense of the mix of data.
In one of Santarelli’s most recent remarks, he tackled the regional games. Unlike most of us, Santarelli has a very large database. He took that data and analyzed a 10-year period for 80 casinos spanning Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Two countries have experienced “meaningful growth” while the rest have struggled to keep their heads above water, especially when incomes are adjusted for inflation. And when Ohio was removed, the entire group fell 0.2 percent over the 10-year period.
Santarelli tried to run a competition, but he could not ignore the impact of IGAMING and I would add mobile sports betting from 2018. This analysis is the broadest scope I have ever seen in a career of trying to identify trends. Trend hunting has been a part of my life for over 30 years. Following the release of November gaming revenue figures in Nevada, a reporter from the Reno Gazette-Journal call me In the old days, I call like this every month, but there is a trend in the reporting; All the major news bulletins have reduced or eliminated coverage of the games except Las Vegas Review-Journal and Nevada independent.
Anyway, Jason Hidalgo from Gazette-Journal I wanted a quote on Renault numbers. Renault reduced in November 2023. The usual cast of characters can be called upon: special events, weather, detention, and a less favorable calendar. But the truth lies deeper and not only in November 2024. Reno is no longer the major casino resort it once was. Thirty-five years ago, Reno was one of the leading casino destinations in the country. It fell behind in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but in 1990. nowhere else was it equivalent.
1990 however, it was the beginning of the expansion of legalized gaming that led to an industry that today generates $70 billion in annual revenue. It’s just the conventional trading games. On top of that, the Indian gaming industry generates another $40 billion. That $110 billion in gaming revenue didn’t exist in 1990; Reno was a big fish in a small pond. Indian games in particular have dominated the Reno feeder landscape. You can’t understand Renault’s numbers without having a sense of the competition it faces.
And that’s my point. The gaming industry needs the likes of Carlo Santarelli. He sees a bigger picture and a deeper picture. In his latest analysis, he looked at a wide area over a long period of time. Others rarely do this. Local commentators look from month to month or at most from one year to the next. Wall Street is notoriously myopic, looking at one quarter at a time. Worse, the investment community’s intense focus on one quarter at a time forces management teams to do the same. It may be better to use a decade model when analyzing, planning and investing. And not just for games for games. Many industries would benefit from taking the long view.