By Miles Flynn | Southern Indiana Business Report
FRENCH LICK — French Lick Casino reported taxable adjusted gross revenue (AGR) of $5,438,671 for the first month of the new calendar year, according to the Indiana Gaming Commission Summary of Wagering and Supplemental Tax for January. The figure is down $1,284,784, or 19%, from December but up from January 2021 by $581,073, or 12%.
The facility continues to lag behind those last “normal” pre-COVID months, despite some progress along the way. The number is off the January 2020 mark by $922,677, or 15%. That gap had been 11% for December, 22% for November, 7% for October, 13% for September, 24% for August, and 9% for July — the first month of the current fiscal year.
With the January numbers in, the running AGR total for the first seven months of the current fiscal year now stands at $42,946,965. That figure is up $10,011,065, or 30%, from where it stood this time a year ago. However, it is still down $7,264,606, or 14%, from pre-COVID January 2020.
Turning to statewide numbers, the 13 casinos around Indiana reported a combined AGR of $174,131,600 for January. That figure is down $23,306,392, or 12%, from December (the last of several historically strong months for the statewide industry as a whole) but is up from January 2021 by $17,379,732, or 11%.
While those percentages aren’t that far off from what was seen locally, the statewide industry as a whole is much closer to its pre-COVID performance, thanks to those aforementioned strong months, than French Lick Casino is. The combined total for January 2022 is only off the January 2020 mark by $3,756,343, or 2%.
The running AGR statewide total for the current fiscal year is now at $1,338,916,930. That figure is up from where it was one year ago by $291,721,701, or 28%, and it’s also up from two years ago by $155,269,823, or 13%.
Taking a look at taxes, French Lick Casino paid $326,320 in wagering taxes and $87,480 in sports wagering taxes for January, bringing total gaming taxes up to $413,800 for the month and $1,994,964 for the fiscal year. Statewide, the numbers amounted to $50,160,484 in wagering taxes, $3,379,376 in sports wagering taxes, and $3,791,123 in the supplemental wagering tax collected at the 10 facilities that had paid the old admission tax before its abolition by the state. Statewide gaming tax totals stand at $57,330,983 for the month and $341,840,472 for the fiscal year.