Trump Plaza Withdraws Layoff Notices as Atlantic City Prepares for Fantasy Sports Betting
Lately it seems that a good deal of the gambling news making headlines is coming out of New Jersey. This is partly because of the broad Internet gambling bill that the state’s governor, Republican Chris Christie, signed at the end of last month, and in part because of other changes occurring in the state’s gambling capital of Atlantic City.
First for the Trump Plaza news. In advance of its impending sale to the Meruelo Group, the casino posted a notice that 1,434 employees may soon be subject to layoffs, an announcement that has been withdrawn this week for reasons that are unclear.
The notice was filed with the New Jersey Department of Labor on March 8 and was also posted on the department’s website, which is required as part of a law called Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN). WARN dictates that employers must provide 60 days advance notice of impending mass layoffs.
The notice has since been removed, though a lawyer for Trump Plaza, John Donnelly, said that Trump Plaza was not responsible for withdrawing the notice and offered no further explanation. The casino originally opened to the public back in 1984.
For its part, the Meruelo Group has said that it plans to hold onto many of the Trump Plaza’s current staff members when it completes its $20 million purchase of the property, a deal that is expected to close in May. The Meruelo Group has also said that it was not involved in the removal of the layoff notices, citing that the current owners of the property are the ones who are legally responsible for notifying the public of any intended layoffs.
Kerri Gatling, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Labor, said of the revocation, “This happens occasionally. Any one of a number of factors could be the reason, i.e., a premature WARN date, the number of employees impacted may have changed, the sale may happen later than originally expected, etc.”
Meanwhile in Atlantic City, a pilot program was announced today that will permit casinos there to begin offering fantasy sports betting to patrons. The New Jersey Department of Gaming Enforcement has established temporary regulations that will take effect on April 22 and will be valid for 270 days, though the Department plans to make the regulations permanent, according to Bloomberg News.
In a press release, the director of the Department of Gaming Enforcement, David Rebuck, said, “The casinos’ vast customer base and the ability to have contest winners utilize the casino cage to accept entry fees for fantasy sports tournaments and pay out winnings resulting from those tournaments provides an exciting opportunity to bring fantasy sports tournaments to Atlantic City.”
“We see this as an added amenity and beneficial to the casinos and their customers,” the release continued.
Fantasy sports are immensely popular in the United States, with an estimated 33 million Americans having played some form of fantasy sports in 2012. This figure represents roughly ten percent of the US population.
Atlantic City has been seeking ways to capture new gamblers and to inject new revenue as the city has struggled with declining revenues in recent years. The gambling industry there peaked in 2006, bringing in $5.2 billion in revenue that year. In 2012, revenue figures totaled $3.05 billion for the dozen casino properties located in Atlantic City.
In addition to offering a wider variety of land-based gambling options, New Jersey officials are hoping that once Internet wagering goes live it will help the Garden State’s gambling economy rebound. When Governor Christie signed the bill last month, New Jersey joined Delaware and Nevada to become the third state in the US to regulate some form of online wagering.
