NJ ends 2015 with new i-gaming feat

cord monthly total of $14.04m for December allowed the New Jersey i-gaming market to generate an annual sum of $148.9m for 2015, up 21%.

Year-on-year increases were reported for every month of the second full year that the state’s online gambling market was in operation.

December marked the second consecutive month that the record monthly aggregate was broken and managed to beat November’s $13.2m.

Borgata contributed more i-gaming win than any other operator, generating $45.7m, a minor increase on its previous year’s figure, followed by Tropicana with $32.8m, up 45%.

It remains to be seen how the market will appear with PokerStars operating in it, after its owner Amaya Gaming predicted that Stars and Amaya’s Full Tilt brand would launch in the third quarter of 2015, but that prediction has now been put back to the first half of this year.

Amaya confirmed it had been granted the relevant regulatory approval by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement in September and predicted as of H1 2015 that Stars holds a 68% market share of the global real-money online poker market.

On the land-based front, Atlantic City’s casino win declined for the ninth consecutive year to $2.41bn, a decrease of 8%, though the market was operating with eight casinos as opposed to 12 at the beginning of 2014, after four casinos closed that year.

New Jersey’s total gaming win for the year was $2.56bn, down 7%.

The state’s voters are set to decide in November on whether to allow two new casinos to be built outside Atlantic City.

Casino gaming launched in New Jersey in 1978, but the market is legally restricted to Atlantic City.