PROVIDENCE – Bally's Corp., the operator of Rhode Island's two casinos and more than a dozen other casinos nationwide, reported a $567.75 million loss for 2024 as it took larger write-downs on the value of its assets and saw smaller gains on its sale-leaseback strategy on casino properties.
The 2024 loss is three times bigger than the $187.5 million loss Bally's recorded for 2023.
Providence-based Bally's, which employs nearly 2,000 workers in Rhode Island, reported its 2024 financial performance in a required
10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 17.
In early March, the company released an incomplete financial report that included revenue figures but not other key numbers such as expenses and the bottom-line loss. That same day, Bally's canceled a scheduled earnings call with analysts without explanation.
A more complete financial statement and balance sheet filed with the SEC shows that Bally's posted $2.45 billion in revenue for 2024, up slightly from the $2.44 billion in the previous year. At Bally's biggest revenue generators – casinos and resorts – the numbers were relatively flat.
The company said it brought in $1.01 billion in gaming revenue at the casinos and resorts for 2024, up 5.6% from the $954.7 million generated a year earlier. But non-gaming revenue at casinos and resorts declined over the same period, from $408.6 million to $354.8 million. (The financial statement did not provide revenue numbers for individual resorts such as Bally's Twin River Lincoln Casino Resort and Bally's Tiverton Casino.)
One bright spot: Revenue for the company's North America Interactive segment – which focuses on digital gambling and sports betting – jumped to $149.6 million in 2024, from $84.4 million in 2023, a 77% increase.
But Bally's total operating costs and expenses climbed to $2.7 billion in 2024 from $2.35 billion the year before, largely because of the write-downs of asset values and a smaller gain on the sale and leaseback of properties.
Bally's said its gains from sale-leaseback – a transaction in which a property owner sells real estate to raise capital and immediately leases the property from the new owner – totaled $86.3 million in 2024, down from $374.3 million the year before, in part because of a $150 million "lease modification" it undertook at the company's Chicago casino project.
At the same time, it recorded $248.9 million in write-downs – or impairment charges – for the value of intangible assets, goodwill and other "long-lived assets" in the company's International Interactive segment. A year earlier, the company's impairment charges totaled $149.8 million.
In its abbreviated earnings release in early March, CEO Robeson Reeves called 2024 a "transformational and transitional" year, noting that the company had funded and begun the development of a flagship Chicago casino and completed the demolition of the Tropicana casino in Las Vegas to make way for an MLB stadium.
On Feb. 13, New York-based hedge fund Standard General L.P. completed its buyout of Bally’s Corp. in a deal that valued the casino operator at $4.6 billion.
Standard General also merged Bally’s with its regional casino chain, The Queen Casino & Entertainment.
As part of the Standard General buyout, 17.9 million Bally’s stockholders elected to retain their shares through a rollover election. As a result, 48.4 million shares of common stock are now outstanding upon completion of the merger transactions.
