What Does It Take To Power a Casino? Just One Million Smartphones

Key Highlights

• A typical casino uses 15,070 kWh of electricity per day
• With 15,070 kWh of electricity, you could charge more than one million smartphones
• With the daily energy consumption of an average land-based casino, you could play online casino games on your phone for more than 800 years
• 1,633 kWh (equivalent to 2 hours and 24 minutes in a casino), gives you enough power to brew 20,000 cups of coffee, keeps a bank running for 48 hours, and a fast-food restaurant for 24 hours

Casinos are notorious for keeping their operational info under the rug, especially the energy consumption details. They’re pretty in-your-face with their flashy lights and giant gondolas, but you won’t find how much electricity a land-based casino uses for the life of you. But what else is new? 

Well, what’s new is that we at Casinomeister dug up some data and did the math on our own. The numbers we got may be an approximation of an average land-based casino’s electricity consumption, but these only point to the fact that the reality is probably even tougher to swallow. 

An average casino uses 15,070 kWh/day — enough to charge more than a million smartphones

If you thought this number was shocking, wait until you see how we crunched it. 

It all goes back to September 2024, when MGM Resorts released a statement saying they now use 323,000 solar panels to power 90% of their total daytime operations at 11 of their Las Vegas Strip properties. 

If we take the numbers provided by MGM Resorts at face value, it’s not too hard to see how much electricity they consumed before they went partially clean. We calculated the output of energy per solar power, MGM’s total daytime power needs, their nighttime demand, and all that jazz, and arrived at an approximation of 1,356,600 kWh/day. 

If you think of an average Las Vegas casino taking up 100,000 square feet (including all their additional amenities), it’s not hard to estimate that this place would eat up 15,070 kWh of electricity every day. 

For perspective, if your smartphone uses 6 watts while charging, you could charge 1.26 million phones with 15,070 kWh. 

A night out in a casino could keep a home running for two months

The latest Las Vegas Visitor Profile Study shows that an average Las Vegas visitor spends 2 hours and 24 minutes gambling. 

Now, let’s pretend that this average Sin City visitor ended up at our hypothetical average casino that hogs 15,070 kWh of electricity for 24 hours. They pull up a few levers, sip a craft cocktail or two, and bam! 2 hours and 24 minutes go by, and the casino has just consumed 1,633 kWh for that time.

To an average electricity layperson (which is most of us) these numbers probably don’t mean much. But we all have power at home and use at least several electrical appliances every day. 

Also, things just hit differently when we’re closer to home, so we referred to the US Department of Energy’s appliance and electronic energy use calculator, did some math ourselves, and now we can all see exactly what you could do with 1,633 kWh of electricity. You could:

• Power up your home for 55 days, since an average US household consumes 899 kWh per month.
• Keep your sprinklers on 24/7 for 17 years.  
• Run your dryer for 25 days nonstop, drying over 15,000 T-shirts.
• Let your coffee maker run for 68 days 24/7 and brew enough coffee for a town of 20,000 people.
• Let your printer go wild for 270 days nonstop and print more than 7 million pieces of paper. That’s roughly 35,000 books. 

Two casino hours, two convenience stores powered

Now it’s time to step outside the comfort zone and look at the bigger picture. Where does the casino industry stand compared to the rest of the commercial places? 

The EIA Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey has all the answers, and they shine a light brighter than the Luxor beam on the overboard consumption that happens day in and day out. 

But don’t take our word for it, let the numbers do the talking:

• 2 hours and 24 minutes at a casino (a.k.a. 1,633 kWh) could sustain two convenience stores to run like clockwork. 
• One night out at a casino could power two average US banks for 24 hours. 
• 2 hours and 24 minutes at a casino could fuel a fast-food restaurant for one full day. 
• A night out in a casino matches the energy of an office with 100 employees running at full capacity for 11 hours straight.

Now that all the numbers are right under our noses, it’s hard to act oblivious and not expect something to change. With all the energy crisis and energy-saving talk swamping the regular folks, we can all agree there’s something that needs to be done in the large-scale users’ backyards first. 

The MGM Resorts went down the solar road first, but that’s just one piece of the puzzle. There are still square feet after square feet of buildings along Las Vegas Boulevard using nothing but electric power. And let’s not even get started on more than 8000 casinos all over the world. 

Should we expect them all to go online? With 15,070 kWh of power an average casino consumes per day, you could spin the reels on your phone for 800+ years. Is that the go-to fix? At this point, we’ll need to hang tight and see. 

For further information please contact Bojana Djordjevic, Head of Editorial Content, at bojana.djordjevic@g2m.com