Atlantic City Casinos Waiting for New Jersey to Regulate Online Gambling
The hotel casino resorts located on Atlantic City’s Boardwalk are in financial troubles, owing to which they are eagerly waiting for their state to create a regulatory framework so that they can boost their revenue by offering licensed online poker and online casino products.
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One of the Atlantic City casinos eagerly waiting for the state to create online gambling regulations is Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa, which aims to be one of the first land casinos to launch online gaming products as soon as it gets a license from New Jersey regulatory bodies. The owner of Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa is Boyd Gaming Corp. Keith Smith, chief executive officer of Boyd Gaming Corp, said that the company is fast getting ready to incorporate online gambling services as soon as the state creates the required regulatory framework. He said, “We look forward to being one of the first to launch in New Jersey.”
He further said that his company considers online gambling to be an immensely “lucrative market.” While he did not provide any estimate of how much his company would gain from New Jersey’s new online gambling laws, he agreed that New Jersey will be able to generate online gambling revenue in the range of $200 million to $1.2 billion annually, as gambling industry experts and gambling analysts have already predicted.
Voicing his opinion of objections to online gambling legalization on grounds that online poker sites and online casinos will have an adverse effect on Atlantic City’s land casinos, he said that online gambling will never “cannibalize” the land casino business as feared; instead, it will encourage more players than ever to visit land casino resorts. He further said, “We think it’s going to be a great addition to our land-based platform.”
Over the past few years, Atlantic City land casinos have been running under a loss because of the fall in number of customers. In Q1 of 2013, New Jersey’s casino gambling revenue fell by 6 percent and gross operating profits plummeted by 27 percent in comparison to what it was in Q1 of the previous year.
In a bid to re-enter the regulated US online gambling market, the major online gambling company PokerStars has initiated procedures to acquire one of the struggling land casinos in Atlantic City. The online poker company has also applied for an interim casino license and is most likely to get a casino license by August.
