GAMBLING INSIDER

Arguably, the most promising sign for the Atlantic City land-based casino market at the halfway mark for the year is that its casino win is marginally in front of where it was at this point a year ago, giving it a chance of ending a run of nine consecutive years of decline.

June’s casino win of $197.5m, down 4% year-on-year, takes the year-to-date figure up to $1.15bn, narrowly ahead of a total of $1.14bn at this point last year.

However, the final total for last year was $2.41bn, and the market is not actually in line to break that figure come the end of the year.

As you were

Regardless of whether or not the decline technically ends, there is little to suggest anything other than a near enough flat-lining of the market being the result come the end of the year, with the dramas of 2014, where four casinos closed, pretty much out of the way and little reason to suggest a boom is in the pipeline either.

Online is still on the up

For online, June’s total was $16.4m, an increase of 40%, and the H1 figure of $94.8m reflects an upturn of 32%.

With last year’s final total being $148.9m, there is little doubt that a significant increase will be posted for 2016.

What also seems clear is that the initial PokerStars impact has settled, with Resorts AC’s online poker revenue dropping for a second consecutive month, going down to $778,000 from May’s $1.2m.

Resorts AC is still the market leader though, ahead of Caesars/Harrah’s/888 ($602,000) and Borgata/PartyGaming ($589,000).

Overall, online poker revenue was slightly up year-on-year to $1.97m, but down month-on-month from $2.57m.

Casino is driving growth, but what's next?

Great encouragement can be found with online casino figures. Online casino win for June was $14.4m, up from $9.8m, and its H1 tally of $81m is up 74%.

Moving forward, the future of the market could be pushed even further in the right direction if the UK can come to the state’s aid and agree a liquidity-sharing deal for online games with the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE).

Global Gaming Business reported that the DGE has sent letters to all of the state’s online gambling platform operators that are licensed in both New Jersey and the UK to ask how a liquidity-sharing system could be executed.

An agreement could be expanded to include all online games and not just poker.