New Jersey’s regulated online gambling market posted its ninth straight month of +$20m revenue despite the online poker vertical posting double-digit year-on-year declines.
Figures released Wednesday by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) show state-licensed online gambling operators generating revenue of $20.6m in November, up exactly one-fifth from the same month last year, while roughly flat from October 2017’s tally.
The online casino vertical posted its usual gaudy gains, rising 24.6% to $18.8m while online poker tumbled 13.1% to $1.8m, not far off the poker vertical’s historic low of $1.73m set this June. For the year-to-date, overall online revenue is up 26.1% to over $224.8m, with casino rising 31.6% to $202.5m and poker falling 8.6% to $22.3m.
As market watchers have come to expect, the Golden Nugget’s casino-only online operations – which include the Nugget’s own site plus Betfaircasino.com and Playsugarhouse.com – outpaced all comers with just under $6.2m, a mere $50k off the market’s all-time individual operator monthly record, which was set by (you guessed it) the Nugget this July.
The runner-up position went to the Borgata family of sites, which reported revenue of $4.27m ($3.7m casino, $576k poker), a healthy gain over last November’s $3.8m, although the poker figure was down nearly 8% year-on-year. The Borgata’s online operations include Borgata-branded sites as well as those of the Borgata’s owners MGM Resorts, plus NJ.PartyPoker.com and PalaCasino.com.
Resorts Digital Gaming jumped into third place with $3.53m ($2.8m casino, $693k poker), up from $3.2m last November. Here again, the poker figure – which stems from PokerStarsNJ.com – was down over 15% year-on-year.
Caesars Interactive Entertainment New Jersey earned $3.35m in November ($2.8m casino, $540k poker). The overall figure was essentially flat, but the poker operations of WSOP.com and 888.com were down 14.5% year-on-year.
It was a rare trip to the revenue basement for the Tropicana Casino & Resort, whose casino-only online operations generated $3.26m in November, although this represented a year-on-year gain of 9.3%.
Clearly, New Jersey’s online poker sites are hoping to get a boost from (in the short term) signing on to the interstate liquidity pact with Nevada and Delaware, and (in the long term) aspirational plans to share liquidity with operators in certain international jurisdictions. And if none of that helps right the ship, maybe Santa could leave some badly needed consumer interest in poker operators’ stockings next year.
