NJ Online Gambling Revenues Fall To $11.4m In April
May 15, 2014 6:54 pmThe New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement has released its gambling results for the state’s 11 land-based casinos, revealing a 1.8% decline in revenues to $224.4 million, compared to $228.5 million generated by its then 12 casinos back in April 2013. On a more positive note, if the results for the Atlantic Club which ceased operating in January 13th are omitted, then revenues were actually higher by 3.3%.
In addition, New Jersey collected a further $11,428,737 from its 16 internet gambling sites, which was down from the $11,878,374 generated in March, and worryingly represented the first drop in igaming revenues since NJ’s first site launched in November 2013. NJ then received $1.7 million by way of online tax revenues, a sum far lower than initial estimates forecast by analysts.
New Jersey’s April online gambling figures were particularly disappointing as the state had been used to returning impressive monthly growth rates up until last month, including a 28% increase in revenues for January, 9% improvement in February, and 15% in March.
Nevertheless, online casino games reported a slight improvement in revenues, but online poker dragged down the overall results, shrinking as it did by 20% to $2.6 million in April from $3.2 million in March. Continuing to dominate NJ’s nascent igaming market was Borgata (bwin.party) with $4.11 million in April, down from $4.39 million in March; and Caesars (888) with $3.05 million, down from the $3.71 million generated the previous month. Together the two gambling venues currently represent 63% of The Garden State’s internet gambling industry.
Commenting on the implications of the latest igaming figures, Chris Grove from onlinepokerreport, explained: “The upshot of that fact is that casinos who saw growth in April managed that growth primarily at the direct expense of their competitors as opposed to via an expansion of the market..That suggests New Jersey’s online casinos are a bit more adept at stealing traffic from one another than generating new customers at this point.”
Although some analysts have suggested The Garden State’s igaming market may already have reached saturation, more optimistic experts have pointed out that NJ still stands to benefit from improvements in its operation, including better educating the public as to NJ’s legal online poker landscape, as well as further improvements to the industry’s payment processing and geo-location technology.