Caesars has not seen significant changes to its financial bottom line in the wake of increased tariffs and greater macroeconomic uncertainty that has rattled stocks and business leaders worldwide.
Key Takeaways
- CEO Tom Reeg attributes customer resilience to macroeconomic pressures primarily affecting wealthy individuals and investors.
- Digital gaming growth is a key buffer against economic downturns, with Caesars' online casino and sportsbook divisions showing strong year-over-year revenue and AEBITDA gains.
Caesars officials said Tuesday that hotel bookings and customer spending remain on pace from previous years. Speaking during the company’s first-quarter earnings call, CEO Tom Reeg said these trends remain steady 90 days out.
“There's no change in terms of what we're expecting in the business,” Reeg said during Tuesday’s earnings call. “We still do not see any of the consumer softness that investors seem to be worried about.”
Macrolevel economic projections
The steady outlook through most of April and the coming months follows roughly steady year-over-year net revenue and adjusted EBITDA from Q1 2024 to Q1 2025.
President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs April 2, two days after most major publicly traded gaming companies collected financial data for their first quarter of 2025. The tariffs, which have since been temporarily suspended, caused significant stock market drops and greater economic concern about increased costs and diminished customer purchasing power.
Reeg said Caesars was “not directly impacted by tariffs.” He said these macroeconomic fears were felt more acutely among higher-income earners and financial media than the majority of Caesars’ customers.
"We live in a world where the stock market and CNBC create an echo chamber, but most of our customers – and most Americans – aren’t stockholders,” Reeg said. “What they see are lower gas prices and wealthy people losing money on TV, which doesn’t feel like a bad situation to them.
“As long as broader economic impacts haven’t hit, our customers are still feeling good."
Digital growth in all economic conditions
Reeg said the company’s growing online gaming revenues would remain an asset regardless of economic conditions.
Caesars’ real money online casino gaming platforms have increased net game revenue from $49 million in 2023 to $118 million in 2025, per the company’s Q1 earnings report. Company officials said Tuesday this has been boosted by the Q3 2023 launch of the Caesars Palace Online Casino and the Horseshoe Online Casino in Q4 2024.
Caesars Sportsbook, which makes up most of its online division’s revenue, saw its structural hold percentage grow to 7% in 2024, the fourth consecutive year the rate increased. The company hopes to reach a 10% long-term structural hold as early as this year, a level already achieved by multiple national market share leaders including FanDuel and DraftKings.
Despite “unfavorable” sporting outcomes in March, driven by a high rate of favorites winning during the 2025 men’s NCAA basketball tournament, Caesars saw improved net revenues and AEBITDA in Q1 2025 compared to Q1 2024. Net revenue increased from $282 million to $335 million during that time, while AEBITDA improved from $5 million to $43 million during that time.
Caesars online casino platforms net gaming revenue:
— Ryan Butler (@ButlerBets) April 29, 2025
Q1 2023: $49 million
Q1 2024: $77 million
Q1 2025: $118 million
These net revenue and AEBITDA totals represented Caesars’ best and second-best quarters, respectively, since the company’s mobile sportsbook launched under the former William Hill platform in 2021.
Reeg said the digital growth in recent years can help prop up the company in the event of a major macroeconomic downturn, an asset it didn’t have during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
"If you are a bear on what's going to happen with the consumer, keep in mind we have never had, in a prior downturn, a business segment that's growing like the digital segment is for us,” Reeg said.
“If you look at where consensus is versus where we were last year, you would have to see a dramatic downturn in brick-and-mortar performance in the last eight months of the year for us not to be a significant grower of AEBITDA this year."
