Nevada Governor Ready To Sign iPoker Compact With NJ

The Nevada Gaming Policy Committee held a meeting in Las Vegas last weekend in which Governor Brian Sandoval (photo) expressed his willingness to sign an online poker interstate compact with New Jersey. According to Sandoval, such an agreement would be akin to “the Yankees and the Dodgers” getting together to form a super-franchise, and he said that such an arrangement would represent a “win-win for both states”.
After making his hopeful proposal, Greenberg Traurig gaming lawyer Mark Clayton chimed in and said that server location issues would have to first be overcome before such a possibility could become a reality. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that any potential agreement would hinge on such an issue, and the real sticking point is instead likely to be the superiority that New Jersey’s online gambling market currently enjoys over Nevada.
Even when New Jersey iGaming was barely ticking along a few months back, the state did not show any great willingness to consider an online poker compact with Nevada. Now that the Garden State has reported six consecutive months of record-breaking revenues, any appetite for such a venture is only likely to be significantly less.
PokerStars’ presence in New Jersey is also helping to boost New Jersey’s iGambling figures, and attract further attention from Nevada. Since launching its NJ product at the end of March, traffic to the gambling websites received a significant boost, and revenue are currently higher by around 30 percent. Furthermore, PokerStars‘ land-based partner, Resorts, generated $3.5 million from its online operation in April, representing a huge 175% improvement versus the $212,739 it generated in April 2015.
At this juncture, it therefore seems unlikely that New Jersey will want to join Nevada and Delaware’s interstate compact any time soon, and according to David Rebuck, Director of the NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement, there currently exists no “reciprocal agreements to expand online gambling” between the states.