New Jersey online casinos, poker rooms and sportsbooks earned yet more firsts during October, continuing momentum built-up during previous months which saw analysts declare that the region was demonstrating “shocking strength”.
As online and retail sportsbooks surpassed $800m for the first time, igaming entities and poker offerings soared beyond the $90m barrier to generate a record $93.5m in revenue, up 106.7 per cent from $45.2m a year earlier. This yielded $14m in state taxes.
Golden Nugget online once again topped the igaming charts with $28.6m in revenue, a 69.2 per cent jump from 2019’s $16.6m, closely followed by Borgata which grew its October figure by 184.6 per cent to $22.1m (2019: $7.75m) and Resorts Digital’s $21.6m (2019: $10.3m)
“Catching the Golden Nugget is a tall task, but operators such as Borgata and Resorts Digital have made important gains,” state Eric Ramsey, analyst at PlayNJ.com. “Operators have been forced to drive revenue through their online portals to supplement what has been lost in the retail market.”
Documenting the jurisdiction’s October sporting performance, analysts at PlayNJ commented that the state is on the path for the “best year in terms of wagering of any legal jurisdiction, a shocking achievement in such an unusual year”.
New Jersey’s online and retail sportsbooks combined to break their own monthly all-jurisdiction record for the third consecutive month with $803.1m in bets in October, according to New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement data. Those bets beat the record $748.6m gained in September and are up 64.6 per cent from $487.9m in October 2019.
October’s bets yielded a record $58.5m in gross operator revenue, up 26.1 per cent from $46.4m year-on-year, and broke the previous record of $53.6m set in January. October’s figures injected $7.4m into state coffers.
Despite months of retail sportsbook closures and sports stoppages, New Jersey has now generated $4.1bn in bets so far this year. That puts New Jersey on pace to surpass Nevada’s all-jurisdiction record of $5.3bn set last year.
“The record-setting pace has now continued even as October’s sports schedule returned to something more resembling normal, which is a great sign for the industry’s near-term,” added Dustin Gouker, lead analyst at PlayNJ.com. “New Jersey is now clearly the standard-bearer among legal sports jurisdictions, and the state seems to only be widening the gap.”
