Betfair Shuts Its New Jersey Online Poker Site After One Woeful Year

Following Ultimate Poker’s exit from New Jersey in October, the Garden State has now lost a second poker room from its online poker market after Betfair shuts its New Jersey operation on December 1st. Betfair New Jersey’s website has now had its poker index page removed, and no poker tables are displayed when the company’s poker platform is launched.
The closure will not affect Betfair’s online casino site in New Jersey, which has performed considerably better than its poker offering. Nevertheless, the writing has been on the wall sometime for Betfair’s New Jersey poker product as the operation generated a mere $90 in rake for the first five weeks it was running in 2013, and for the first 10 months of 2014 that figure has fallen further to just $50. Hardly stellar results.
Meanwhile, Betfair NJ’s casino games operation produced $855,869 in revenues for October alone, while for the first 10 months of 2014 the site has generated a total of $6,677,288.
Since it entered the New Jersey poker market, Betfair’s online poker room struggled to garner any interest from players, despite offering attractive incentives including a 40% rakeback offer, and a VIP program with 20% rakeback. Betfair’s plight in New Jersey was also hindered by its land-based partner Trump Plaza, closing down in September, and having to enter into a new partnership deal with first Caesars Entertainment and then later the Golden Nugget. Striking an optimistic tone at the time, Don Ryan, senior vice president of gaming for Betfair US, commented:
“We are very excited to move our operations to Golden Nugget Atlantic City, one of the premier resort destinations in New Jersey. With this relationship, Betfair and Golden Nugget are well positioned to accelerate growth in 2015 and beyond.”
It now seems Betfair was talking specifically about its online casino operation, as its poker product failed to take off since launching in the state back in November of 2013, and is now no more.