The American Gaming Association is optimistic that this year will see an improvement in gaming revenues this year as the industry continues its recovery from the recession.

Speaking to InterGaming, the association’s president, Frank Fahrenkopf, said the fall in discretionary spending and lack of liquidity in the financial markets after the crash of 2008 had a major impact upon commercial casinos.

"There were many of our companies, both domestically and abroad, that were involved in billion dollar building projects that suddenly faced the prospect of not being able to refinance, not being able to borrow additional money and not being able to issue bonds or preferred stock - it caused tremendous difficulty," he explained.

The situation improved slightly last year, however, as the industry began to get back on track.

"Through it all we have survived and we’re now seeing that last year was the first year in a number of years where we actually had an uptick," he continued. "We’re only up one percentage point compared with 2009 and, while a one per cent increase is not indicative of a complete recovery, the recovery of the entire economy is slow and laborious."

Already this year the industry looks set to surpass 2010’s growth, he said.
"So far the numbers for 2011 show that we’re headed in the right direction and at this point in June we’re up about 3.31 per cent. Again, being up 3.31 per cent for the six months is not magnificent but it shows we levelled out a couple of years ago - last year we were up a little bit, this year we’re up again.

"Hopefully this economy will get cooking again and we’ll see things start to move up again."

To read our full interview with Frank Fahrenkopf, look out for the October issue of InterGaming at G2E Las Vegas.