Delaware iGambling Falls 18% to $2.4M in 2017

The Delaware Lottery has released its online gambling figures for the whole of 2017, and the news was not good with revenues tumbling by 18% to just $2.4 million versus the previous year. By way of comparison, New Jersey whose population of 9 million people is around ten times that of Delaware (952k) generated online gambling revenues of $245 million over the same period, or more than a hundred times that of Delaware.
Producing the major share of Delaware’s iGambling business in 2017 was its video lottery games (slots) segment with revenues of $1.6 million, marking a 10% drop compared to 2016. Meanwhile, online table games saw its year-on-year revenues plummet by 28% to $559,999 compared to the $777k that was collected in 2016, while for internet poker the slide was even more pronounced with revenue down by a whopping 48% to $231,000 from $376k a year earlier.
Delaware launched its online gambling industry back in 2013, and since inception has now seen its online poker revenues contract by 61%. Furthermore, the continuing declines comes despite Delaware and Nevada launching their shared online poker liquidity compact in 2015. Case in point, a glance at PokerScout’s latest ‘Online Poker Traffic Report’ shows a 7-day average of just 150 cash game players on the network, and a 24 hour peak of 303 players.
Fortunately for both Delaware and Nevada, last year the state of New Jersey finally signed an agreement to share its online poker liquidity with these other regulated markets, with an official online poker network launch expected sometime this year. In addition, Pennsylvania with a population of almost 13 million is expected to follow suit once it gets its own newly legalised industry up and running, which is likely to be either in late 2018 or 2019.
Further good news may come if other states also feel motivated to legalize online gambling industries of their own in 2018, such as New York and Michigan. Otherwise a lack of overall liquidity will only serve to hinder the growth of the market, as seen by the woeful state of Delaware’s online poker results.