Atlantic City’s Online Gaming Sites Are Hope for the Future
The several month old New Jersey online gambling industry had a 28% boost in revenues over a one-month period from December 2013 to January 2014 a recent report from the state indicates. January 2014 was only the second full month of activity for the New Jersey online casino websites, so having such a stark increase is a good sign for the Atlantic City gaming interests.
Not everyone is pleased with the progress, though. Many observers had expected to see the numbers jump to over $10 million in net revenues, but January’s combined tally was $9.5 million. Managing expectations is important in a public endeavor like this particular Atlantic City project, so much of the coverage of the numbers has been negative or disappointing. In all, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement reports that over 198,000 people have registered accounts on the new gaming operations, since the new era begin in November 2013.
Borgata and BWIN Are Early Winners
The partnership between Borgata Casino and the BWIN.party group continues to net early results, though the numbers are trending down after their stellar first month results. In December 2013, the Borgata/BWIN combination had over 50% of the revenues collected in online gambling. That number is down to 41% in January, though this is still enough to lead the pack by a considerable margin. The Borgata site $3.9 million, which is a 16% increase over its numbers from the previous month. Those results were split between Borgata and Party Poker, but for the first time, the Borgata Online Casino outperformed the traditional PartyPoker branded poker site.
Caesars Interactive Entertainment Cuts the Gap
Caesars Interactive Entertainment had the second-best showing for the second month in a row. CIE’s numbers increased by 50% from one month to the next, so the Caesars Entertainment made significant progress in catching Borgata in the early results.
The online casino made most of the gains, pulling within $1 million of the CIE’s poker site. Because Caesars Interactive Entertainment refuses to break down results between all of the 888 Holdings sites, it’s hard to know which one of the particular gaming sites are performing better than others.
Trump Taj Mahal Is Third
Trump Taj Mahal and Ultimate Gaming had the third best total with just over $858,000 in revenues. All but $88 thousand of that sum came from the online casino side of the business, as opposed to the poker side of the ledger. The totals only increased by 4% over the previous month, though.
Tropicana and Gamesys Improve by Nearly 40%
The partnership between Tropicana Casino and Gamesys produced a similar total to the Trump/Ultimate pairing, collecting $841,000 for the month. The number represented a 39% increase over a one-month period. All of that money came from the Internet casino, because the virtual poker room has yet to launch. This would indicate the Tropicana/Gamesys websites might be ready to leapfrog the Trump Taj Mahal in the monthly standings.
The Trump Plaza and Betfair combination raked in $557,000 in January, for a 39% increase in its revenues. Their poker website appeared to have troubles, as it collected only $11 in January. Golden Nugget Online Casino earned $287,000, which represented a significant 62% increase over the December totals. Once again, Golden Nugget has yet to launch its card room, so these numbers stand to increase in the coming months.
Poker Sites Lagging
The poker sites lagging behind are some cause for concern, but an online card room takes time to build up a card playing community. Most online casino games work just as well as a solitary game, while poker requires a table full of real people to make it fun and interesting. Naturally, the online casino games like slot machines are likely to have a faster start. While one can assume slots casinos are always going to rake in more money than the virtual Texas hold’em room, one can expect incremental increases in the poker attendance as the months go by.
Land-Based Casinos Slumping
The numbers for the land-based Atlantic City casinos slumped over the past month by 9%. Analysts say that the failing numbers are not a result of the inception of online gambling option.
Visitors to the Boardwalk casinos aren’t simply staying home to gamble, because the statistics show that 85% of the people who’ve played online have not made a trip to that site’s corresponding brick-and-mortar location in the last 2 years. It appears that the online gaming revenue streams are going to help boost overall revenues without cannibalizing their loyal customer base, which had been a fear in the run-up to the launching of the Internet gaming portals.
