Online Gambling Revenues Rebound in New Jersey

New Jersey state is experiencing a rebound in revenue for its regulated gambling market, allaying mounting fears after three months of declines.

Big Six Perform

The six New Jersey casinos providing dual online and land-based casinos recorded a cumulative total of approximately $10.1 million in revenue, up a healthy $600k from the previous month’s totals.

Of those totals, online casino games accounted for $7.9m (+5%) with poker contributing $2.2m (+10%). The highest performing month for total gambling revenues for the year was March's $11.9m peak, but $10.1 is certainly nothing to sneeze at in a low computer usage summer month that July represents. Further, in July online registration still rose 7.1% to 405k.

The most successful individual gaming provider in New Jersey was the Borgata/Bwin.party combo, which brought in just short of $3.2m in revenue, (down 8.5%). $2.1m of that total (down 12.5%) came via casino and $1.1m (+3%) from poker. Another site in New Jersey, Caesars' Interactive, pulled $2.7m ( up 4%), with $1.7m ( up 3%) derived from casino and $1m (up 6%) derived from poker. Tropicana/Gamesys' casino-only site retained the third-place spot, earning a shade under $2m (+13%).

The recently launched Golden Nugget’s casino-only built on its early momentum to earn almost $945k, a 25% jump. Trump Plaza/Betfair pairing rebounded from a June falloff to bring in $676k, a huge 35% jump, all but $1 of which was earned from land-based casinos. Finally, the Trump Taj Mahal/Ultimate Gaming duo pulled in $587k (+18%), all but $26k was earned via casino.

New Healthy Competition in the Fall

These individual market showings are consistent with the established competitive hierarchy, but there is a sense that a more substantial shakeup is possible in the fall. In fact, NJPokerOnline’s Jennifer Newell reported that online casino providers PokerStars and Full Tilt were due to launch New Jersey sites as early as October 1st, rendering realistic expectations as sometime in Q4.

While the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) has declined to officially confirm these rumors, the market entry is virtually assured by Amaya's acquisition of PokerStars and Full Tilt provider Rational Group, which formally ended any “bad actor” associations under previous legislation that had previously blocked these online casinos.