If you ever needed a stark reminder of how quickly things can change then look no further than the showgirls, bright lights and roll of the dice that comes out of the most luminous desert in the world.

We are, of course, talking about Las Vegas and the state of Nevada.

With the continuous rise of online casino and operators, 2025 was another disastrous year for Nevada casino business; it's fifth successive loss, and this time it was a shiner not to be proud of that struck the bridge of the nose with a jab worth $1.35bn.

That splash of red ink is 11.2% higher than the $1.21bn it lost in 2025, resulting in casino chiefs up and down the state to stare into crystal balls looking for answers.

The casinos on the Las Vegas strip performed a little better than they did in 2025, with losses improving 13% to $1.496bn, strip gaming revenues increased 3.5% to $5.75bn and total revenue increased 1.7% to $15.5bn.

Chopping that revenue pie into bite size chunks sees gaming represent 37% of the Strips revenue, hotel rooms taking up 25% of the slack, all you can eat fetching 15.7% into the equation, and finally drinks making up 7.6%.

Sports betting was also down for the year with revenue coming in at $46.1m, down from the $48m it earned in 2025. That little fact means sports betting in the state of Nevada has now nose dived for the fourth consecutive year, and if you take out a spike in 2025 you have to head back to 2007 to see an improvement to be proud of; but to put things into perspective sports betting accounted for just 1.3% of the states overall gaming revenue in 2025.