Since the legalization of online betting and gambling, in-person gambling across Atlantic City’s casinos has been on the decrease. Not counting the pandemic period when land-based casinos was closed for business, the popularity of online gambling seems to be overshadowing in-person activities. So does this mean that in-person gambling is becoming obsolete in NJ? Let’s find out.
What do the numbers say?
According to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement and the data they’ve released last year, Atlantic City casinos reported $227.3 million in revenue from core gambling endeavors back in May. During the same period last year, Atlantic City’s casinos generated $233 million from in-person gambling mostly table games and slot machines.
This is not a drastic decrease in revenue but a decrease nonetheless. In other words, there is some concern about this trend. Still, Atlantic City casino revenue has exceeded $1.1billon in 2023 from overall in-person gambling, which is a 3% increase than previous year. It seems that a few operators are doing better than the majority.
The current state of NJ casinos and their revenue
As mentioned before, some operators are doing better than the others for now, at least. That said, Ocean Casino resort reported $29.8 million revenue in May, which is a 17.3% increase compared to previous year. Also, The Boardwalk casino reported $155 million in gambling revenue so far, which is 19% more than they had last year. Moving on, Bally’s casino has also reported a 4.2% increase in revenue compared to last year with $13.2 million so far.
On the other hand, Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, although a market leader among Atlantic City’s casinos, reported a $60.5 million in revenue this spring which is a 4.5% decrease compared to last year. Furthermore, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City reported a 6.5% decrease in revenue compared to May 2022 earning #38.8 million in May 2023. In addition to that, Caesars Atlantic City, Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City and Tropicana Atlantic City all reported a decrease in revenue, which is 9.6%, 10.3% and 0.2% respectively.
Even the two smallest operators in Atlantic City, Resorts Casino Hotel and Golden Nugget Atlantic City reported lower revenues than in May previous year. While Resorts casino is down by 5%, Nugget is just under $12.8 million they had last year.
So what does this mean?
Although NJ casino operators are slowly returning to the pre-pandemic levels like the majority of US operators in general, things simply aren’t going at a pace everyone expected they’ll go. Things are going much slower and decrease in revenues for the majority of operators proves that.
Online gambling may be more popular due to convenience and other aspects, including bonuses casinos offer to attract new players with incentives such as this bet365 NJ bonus code deal, but in-person gambling shouldn’t become obsolete so soon. Whether or not this trend will continue remains to be see.
Perhaps this is a momentary drop in in-person gambling or perhaps this is bad news for land-based casino operators. It’s too early to say for sure but things can go in any direction at this point. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.
