Online poker behemoth PokerStars is willing to spend $10m building a new poker room at Atlantic City’s Resorts Casino Hotel, but only if New Jersey regulators approve their gaming license application. Stars has partnered with Resorts to participate in New Jersey’s online gambling market, and New Jersey mover and shaker William J. Pascrell III told the Press of Atlantic City’s Donald Wittkowski that Stars would start swinging its sledgehammers to build the new land-based poker room “as soon as the license is in hand.”
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s similar to the pledge Stars made for the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel, the AC gaming joint Stars had sought to buy in late 2012. Before the Atlantic Club found a legal way to wiggle out of its deal (and keep the $11m Stars had fronted it), Stars’ spokesman Eric Hollreiser had vowed that the Atlantic Club’s casino floor would soon boast a space similar to Stars’ branded poker rooms at casinos in Macau and London.
The demise of the Atlantic Club deal meant the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement never finished vetting the gaming license application of Stars’ parent outfit the Rational Group. Rational’s license bid prompted furious pushback from the Caesars Anti-Competitive Association (CACA), who felt that Stars’ association with Black Friday should preclude it from ever again setting a digital foot on American soil.
Never mind that Stars is promising to create hundreds of new jobs if its license is approved. Fifty of these would get to work immediately to set up the necessary digital infrastructure in AC, followed by a further 150 jobs by Q2 2014 to establish Stars’ official North American headquarters in the Garden State. A further 200 New Jersey jobs could follow by the end of 2014, depending on how the state’s online market fares and the pace of establishing interstate online poker compacts. New Jersey is set to launch its online market by Nov. 26, but the state will officially confirm whether that target is realistic by Friday, Oct. 11.
