Thomas Reeg
CEO at Caesars Entertainment
Thanks. To dig a little more deeply into numbers starting in regional. April was a terrible month for us when we last talked to you.
We're obviously -- in April, you had the Easter calendar shift. That wasn't clear how the month would shake out. But if you look at the decline in regional year-over-year, April was more than 100% of that. May and June, both were up year-over-year. If you look at Caesars specific items in the quarter, New Orleans were at peak construction disruption in the center of the casino right now. That's going to continue for the next month or so. So that hits us in this quarter as well.
Reno, those of you who have followed us a long time know that one of the biggest groups in Reno are the bowlers. This year's Bowling Group is about 20% of the size of last year. So we're missing well over 40,000 direct room nights from them and likely more as they book through other channels. And the combination of those 2 items in the quarter cost us $25 million -- over $25 million of EBITDA, and those will continue into the third quarter. The bowlers left end of July last year. New Orleans Construction will complete Labor Day.
In addition, Churchill's Terre Haute property impacted Indianapolis in the quarter, and we anniversaried the temporary opening in Virginia for about half of the quarter.
So as I look forward, I'd expect third quarter looks something like this. Fourth quarter, we get the benefit of a full quarter of New Orleans rolling out its new product. Recall that we've got about $80 million there of incremental gaming revenue that -- with the way taxes work in New Orleans would be without casino tax to us and then expect Virginia to open before the end of the year. So I would expect we'd be a grower in the fourth quarter, third quarter probably looks similar to this. And then we feel good about '25 in regional.
In Vegas very pleased with the quarter. Keep in mind, we had about $20 million of headwinds between union contract raises plus employee in venues that weren't open last year. So restaurants that were under construction and opened subsequent to second quarter last year. So to fade that $20 million and grow. I'm particularly heartened that hold was a nonevent in the quarter. We were in our range. And the difference quarter-over-quarter was less than the increase in EBITDA. Obviously, we held margins well.
Anthony mentioned the 2 hotel remodels that we did, Colosseum performing quite well. Versailles has knocked the cover off the ball for us. That's -- Versailles rooms are up $65 in ADR year-over-year. That's almost 60% lift, and that's before the rooms with the balconies came online just recently, and the connector should open in this quarter that should have further tailwinds on that tower that's been our most successful hotel renovation in possibly the history of Caesars, certainly since we've been involved. So excited about that.
Rest of the year looks strong. Expect Vegas to post growth. I know that that's not what's been reflected in estimates, but we feel very good about the rest of the year and into '25. Eric talked about digital, another quarter of nearly 30% net revenue growth, 50% flow-through, which is what we've told you that we expect to deliver. July is off to a fantastic start. Growth is in excess of that target. So we feel good about third quarter and then we'll get into, by the end of this quarter, we'll be into football. So feel very good about where digital is headed.
Expect that the Horseshoe brand, the second brand in iCasino can help us build on the gains that we've had since we rolled out Caesars Palace online. So momentum in digital is quite strong for us and all of the targets that we've laid out in the past still seem well within our grasp. So feel very good about that. And then as Bret and Anthony both hit on, we will roll out -- we'll finish our capex cycle that we entered into when we closed the merger in 2020 with the opening of Virginia by the end of the year. That will bring that capex down a couple of hundred million gross capex over $500 million.
And coupled with what's going on in digital in the brick-and-mortar portfolio, we're going to see a significant lift in free cash flow. As we stated. You should expect us to be looking for what we'll do with that free cash flow. We continue to plan to reduce debt to reduce leverage. At current levels in the stock, I wouldn't be surprised -- you shouldn't be surprised if you see us become a buyer of stock as we get to that inflection point.
And with that, I will turn it back for questions.
