Caesars' Q3 Loss Widens to $123 Million as Las Vegas Softens
Caesars Entertainment reported a wider third-quarter net loss on Tuesday, as softness in its core Las Vegas business outweighed continued growth in its regional casinos and online operations. The results arrive as the company moves toward closing its $17.6 billion sale to Fertitta Entertainment, a deal that has already reshaped how Caesars reports to the market.
The headline numbers
Net revenue rose 2.5% year over year to $2.94 billion, just short of analyst expectations of roughly $2.97 billion. The company's net loss attributable to Caesars more than doubled to $123 million, from $55 million in the same quarter last year, working out to a loss of $0.61 per share against a forecast loss of around $0.10. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA slipped 2.1% to $865 million from $884 million a year earlier.
A tale of three segments
Las Vegas, Caesars' largest and highest-margin segment, had a rough quarter: revenue fell 2.3% to $930 million and adjusted EBITDA dropped 9.5% to $343 million, though the segment's net loss actually narrowed from $132 million to $79 million. Regional casinos were the opposite story, with revenue up 5.9% to $1.63 billion and adjusted EBITDA up 3.6% to $524 million. Caesars Digital, the company's online sports betting and casino arm, kept accelerating — revenue climbed 4.8% to $326 million and adjusted EBITDA jumped 57.1% to $44 million, flipping from a $21 million net loss a year ago to $4 million in net income this quarter.
Analysts at Citizens pegged Caesars' online market share as still shrinking even as digital revenue grows: sports betting handle share slipped from 5.2% to 4.9%, sports betting revenue share from 4.1% to 3.6%, and online casino share from 7.1% to 6.4%. Unlike DraftKings, FanDuel, and Fanatics, Caesars has stayed out of prediction markets entirely, with CEO Tom Reeg citing risk to its retail casino licenses — though Reeg used Caesars' G2E appearance to take a jab at Kalshi for listing a contract tied to Caesars' own pending acquisition, saying "there was nowhere in their rules that said I couldn't place a bet" on it himself.
The Fertitta deal in the background
Caesars shareholders approved the all-cash, $17.6 billion acquisition by Tilman Fertitta's Fertitta Entertainment on September 22, with the transaction targeted to close by June 2027 pending regulatory approval; the FTC issued a second request for information in September that extends antitrust review. Because of the pending deal, Caesars skipped its usual quarterly earnings call for a second straight quarter. At quarter's end the company carried about $11.7 billion in debt against $864 million in cash, for net debt of roughly $10.8 billion — a balance sheet that will become Fertitta's problem to manage once the deal closes and Caesars exits the Nasdaq as a public company.