New Jersey reports on first six weeks of internet gambling

On Tuesday the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement included numbers the online gambling industry has been waiting for in its report on Atlantic City gambling performance, noting that for the six weeks in 2013 that the internet gambling market has been open, revenues of $8.4 million were generated.

The revenues fell around $2 million short of most predictions for the brief reporting period, with online poker generating around 40 percent of the revenues and the remainder going on internet and mobile casino gambling.

The MGM-Boyd-Bwin partnership under the Borgata brand performing best in the state’s overall online gambling sector, dominating almost half the market with $3.75 million in revenues – $1.9 million from poker and $1.8 million from casino action.

Caesars Interactive-888 was the closest rival, generating almost $2.4 million in online revenues – $1.2 million from poker and $1.17 million from casino.

Other competitors in the online market reported as follows:

Trump Taj Mahal – Ultimate Gaming: $883,037 – $104,000 from online poker and $778,000 from casino.

Tropicana – Gamesys: $748,589 from online casino only – poker not yet launched.

Trump Plaza – Betfair: $427,739; $90 from online poker and $427,000 from casino operations.

Golden Nugget: $177,653 from online casino only – no poker product yet.

The regulator did not update its most recent stats regarding the number of online gambling accounts that have been opened so far; its most recent report indicated that this number is approaching 150,000.

The most successful month was December 2013, when $7.38 million of all online revenues was generated as the new market picked up momentum.

Online sector observers expect performances to lift going forward as big-money marketing plans disclosed by the major companies involved start to make an impact; more operators become fully operational with both poker and casino action; the New Jersey public becomes more familiar with the concept of remote gambling, and technical and administrative teething problems are eliminated.

Speaking about Borgata’s online success, Keith Smith, president of Boyd Gaming, said:

“Our network has attracted the largest pool of players in the New Jersey online market, allowing us to offer our customers a wide selection of games and table stakes at all times. This gives our network a significant competitive advantage and positions us for further success.”

Smith said that the numbers made it clear that “…online gaming is complementary to our land-based business, not competitive.”

“When matching our online and land-based databases, we found that 60 percent of online casino customers had not been to Borgata in over a year, and over 75 percent had made fewer than two trips to Borgata in the past year,” he noted.

“And, on a combined basis, online and land-based poker revenue at Borgata was up more than 40 percent from our land-based play in December 2012.”

On the land gambling side, the New Jersey regulator reported that revenues in 2013 were 6.2 percent down on 2012 at $2.9 billion, and a world away from the pre-recession highs of years past, when revenues peaked at $5.2 billion.

Land gambling experts noted that this is the first time in 22 years that Atlantic City’s casino revenue has fallen below $3 billion as increasing competition in the northeastern US continued to shrink the market.

Once again the Borgata took the lead with $616,969,725 in total gaming win.