New Jersey’s regulated online gambling market shook off the summer doldrums to set a new revenue record in July, while the Golden Nugget established a new individual operator benchmark.
Figures released Tuesday by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) show the state’s licensed online gambling operators generated revenue of $25.9m in July, a $5.3m improvement over the same month last year and $300k higher than the market’s previous high-water mark set this March.
To absolutely no one’s surprise, the online casino vertical did all the heavy lifting, with revenue shooting up nearly 30% to just over $24m. By contrast, the poker vertical slumped nearly 8% to $1.85m.
For the year-to-date, total online revenue is up 16.5% to $165.4m, with the casino vertical up 19.7% to $152.4m and poker down 11% to $13m (less than 8% of the total pie).
July was also a record-breaking month for the Golden Nugget, which reported over $9.3m from its casino-only online operations. That easily surpassed the Nugget’s previous market-best monthly total of $8.65m set this March.
The Borgata family of sites earned runner-up status despite its combined casino/poker total barely surpassing half of the Nugget’s casino-only total. The Borgata earned $4.9m in total, with nearly $468k of that coming via its poker sites.
Resorts Digital Gaming, whose operations include The Stars Group’s PokerStars brand, ranked third with $3.94m, of which $653k came from poker.
Caesars Interactive Entertainment was fourth with just under $3.8m, but its poker sites – which are currently the only ones sharing liquidity with sites in Delaware and Nevada – earned top honors with just under $728k. The Tropicana’s casino-only sites placed fifth with $3.35m.
July welcomed the first online contributions from Atlantic City’s newest gaming venues, the Ocean Resort Casino and the Hard Rock Atlantic City. Both operations are casino-only, and the Hard Rock’s $330k handily beat out Ocean Resort’s $250k, although the Hard Rock had at least a week’s head-start.
Both of these new casinos’ online operations have already signed live casino deals with Evolution Gaming, which expects to launch its New Jersey live dealer studio in the near future.
