Internet gambling revenues up 28 percent in New Jersey
News on 13 Feb 2014
News on 13 Feb 2014
It looks as though internet gambling in New Jersey is starting to ramp up significantly, with January revenues coming in at $9.46 million – a 28 percent rise over December, the first full month that state residents and visitors could gamble online.
On the land side, Atlantic City casinos took another knock, with revenues down 9.2 percent to
$186.3 million from a year earlier, the state Division of Gaming Enforcement reported.
Six land casino operators in Atlantic City are offering online betting, and most have accepted that the new genre will take time to ramp up to substantial levels. For now the consensus appears to be that progress is encouraging and the new business has good potential.
The DGE reports that at the end of January there were 197,782 Internet gaming accounts established in New Jersey since play began on November 21 as gamblers continue to sign up.
Borgata Casino Hotel & Spa, continued to lead the online gambling operators presently offering online wagering, with $3.9 million in revenue or about 41 percent of the market. Borgata is owned by MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming Corp. who are in partnership with Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment.
Caesars and online partner 888 was in second place with $3 million in online revenue.
Keith Smith, president of Boyd Gaming, which owns half the Borgata, reiterated that online gambling had again brought new customers to the Borgata rather than cannibalising existing business.
“These results also once again demonstrate online gaming’s potential to expand our business,” he told the Associated Press news agency.
“About 85 percent of our online players have not had rated play at Borgata in at least two years, showing there is little overlap with our land-based business. Online gaming is growing our database, creating a long-term opportunity to market Borgata to an entirely new group of customers.”
The Borgata has 41 percent of New Jersey’s online market, but Caesars Interactive reduced the gap in January, increasing its online revenue by 49 percent.
Seth Palansky, a spokesman for Caesars Interactive said, “We saw huge growth in online casino revenue, and significant growth in poker revenue, too. We started marketing in earnest in January, and the promotions we offered our customers really seemed to resonate well. We’re very encouraged on how the New Jersey market is performing for us across all three of our brands, CaesarsCasino.com, Harrahscasino.com and WSOP.com.”
AP reports that the other Internet gambling providers continued to lag behind in January. The Trump Taj Mahal, with its Ultimate Casino brand, took in $858,351, placing it slightly ahead of the Tropicana Casino and Resort, with its Virgin and Tropicana brand sites, which took in $841,065 for the month.
Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino and its Betfair brand won $557,007 online in January, and the Golden Nugget Atlantic City, with its self-branded site, won $286,922 online.
The $9.5 million in online gambling revenues in January produced $1.4 million in state taxes, based on the state’s 15 percent internet gross revenue tax.
When combined with revenues collected since late November -— when New Jersey became the third U.S. state to offer online casino gambling — the state treasury is on a pace to collect roughly $10 million in tax revenues from Internet gambling by the end of the fiscal year in June.
