RIP Showboat Atlantic City: 1987 To 2014

In March 1987, the Showboat Hotel and Casino opened with great fanfare in Atlantic City, but 27 year later the Mardi Gras themed casino has become yet another casualty of New Jersey’s waning gambling industry and has now shut its doors for good. Following the casino’s closure at 4pm on Sunday 31 August, a regular customer posted a sign on the doors, stating:
“Goodbye Showboat. Thank you Showboat employees. You’re the best!! You deserve better!!” It is a Very Sad Day indeed!! Showboat Hotel and Casino 1987-2014 – You will be missed!!
The Caesar’s Entertainment owned property had employed 2,100 people, and the company has since offered 470 of them jobs at its other three casinos in New Jersey, or at its casinos in other states. However, that number apparently represent just half of the original applications for a transfer.
At the beginning of the year, the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel closed at a loss of 1,600 jobs, followed now by the Showboat Atlantic City, with the $2.4 billion Revel Casino Hotel shutting in September at a loss of 3,100 members of staff, and the Trump Plaza expected to do likewise in mid-September, shedding 1,153 employees in the process.
New Jersey’s first casino opened in 1978 and gambling revenues increased every year thereafter until its peak in 2006 of $5.2 billion, after which revenues continued to slide to just $2.86 billion last year. As well as a recession, increased competition from neighbouring states such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and Delaware have helped quicken New Jersey’s casino decline.
Nowadays, industry analysts agree that Atlantic City’s best days are now far behind, and that a consolidation in the state’s casino industry is required to recorrect the decline in demand. As Caesars Entertainment chief executive officer Gary Loveman, commented recently:
“These markets can reach points when no new supply is indeed the right answer. In some cases reducing supply is the right answer.”