New Jersey online gambling trial successful for most

The 5-day trialling period for New Jersey online gambling has given the state Division of Gaming Enforcement sufficient confidence to give permission for six of the seven Atlantic City casinos to commence full-on real-money operations from today (November 26).

Borgata and bwin.party; Bally’s and 888 Holdings; Caesars and Amaya; Tropicana and GameSys; Trump Plaza and Betfair; and Trump Taj Mahal and Ultimate Gaming are the companies that have been given the green light.

The seventh – the Golden Nugget – started a day behind its rivals and is required to complete the full 5-day trial.

Golden Nugget released a statement saying it had chosen to hold for a week before launching its site, and that as a result of the test period it was thought necessary that the customer experience be improved.

“There is nothing more important to the Golden Nugget than our player satisfaction,” Thomas Winter, the casino’s vice president of internet gaming operations, said in the statement. “Being among the first to launch our online gaming site is not what is important to us. It is more important to be among the best.”

DGE director David Rebuck said Monday that the six successful casinos can begin offering round-the-clock online gambling.

New Jersey began a five-day trial period of online gambling last Thursday. The purpose was to test the complex technology involved in the games and determine whether the systems are ready for the entire state to log on and play.

Although not of sufficient magnitude to derail the start of full operations, there were geolocation and credit card glitches during the trial period some of which have since been ironed out.

Some American banks and credit card providers remain a problem, and are still leary of processing gambling transactions, but gambling company executives and the regulator are working with the banking industry and hope to improve the situation.

During the test, which started last Thursday, the digital casinos were limited to 500 players at a time, but Rebuck revealed to The Star Ledger newspaper that demand had been high, with 10,000 punters signing up for online action in the first three days starting Nov. 21.

Thirteen websites belonging to the six green-lighted casinos have been allowed to lift testing restrictions, said Rebuck. He added that there were “…no significant, widespread regulatory problems or identified technical barriers for going live to the rest of the state.”

Mitch Garner, CEO of Caesars Interactive Entertainment said Monday:

“We’re definitely very happy with the sign-ups. The results were especially encouraging given that operators hadn’t begun marketing yet and some would-be customers had trouble registering.”

Rebuck recapped that 75 new companies have been authorised to operate online in New Jersey, including payment processors and technology providers; about 240 games have been approved.

Customer registrations have occurred throughout the state, although they are heavily concentrated in more populated regions, such as in the suburbs outside of New York and Philadelphia, he said.

Related and similar