Online instead of bricks and mortar at Atlantic City?

With three Atlantic City land operators going to the wall this year and persistently declining revenues from the land gambling side, the New York Post suggested an innovative alternative this week…focus on internet and mobile gambling and shutter the land casinos.

The idea is not quite as tongue-in-cheek as it may appear; the newspaper outlines the billions that have been lost in trying to make a success of the bricks and mortar enterprises in AC as competition has mounted from new casinos in neighbouring states.

And, as New Jersey state Senator Ray Lesniak keeps reminding everyone, there is great potential for employment and taxes in creating an international online gambling bub in Atlantic City.

Opponents of such a revolutionary solution as shuttering land gambling will, however, point to the disappointingly slow take-off of legalised online gambling in the state since last November’s launches, which have produced numbers that are not even close to the ambitious predictions last year of politicians and analysts.

The Post uses the soon-to-close Revel Casino to make a point on how much money has been lost, commenting that the $2.4 billion venture has received $261 million in state tax breaks and has still failed. It argues that the $261 million could have been spent paying $84,000 each to the 3,100 employees set to lose their jobs at the Revel.

To make matters worse, Deutsche Bank has predicted that the city will have only six casinos by 2017, the Post notes, observing that Atlantic City unemployment is high at 18 percent, and that median household income remains less than half of the rest of the state.

Attempts to introduce sports betting to boost the land gambling operations have failed after litigation and Governor Chris Christie vetoing the latest bill from the Legislature seeking to circumvent the federal PASPA (see previous reports).

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