New Jersey’s love affair with gambling shows no sign of abating. June’s numbers show a year-on-year increase, with over $400 million made from wagers made both online and at brick and mortar establishments.
The increase in New Jersey betting revenue has been seen across the board, with a 15% upturn coming overall, with internet gaming increasing by 9% when compared to June 2021 and shows that interest in betting continues to be on an upward trajectory.
With online casino activity starting to become a lot more expansive across the United States in recent years, with new states passing legislation to legalize online gambling of varying types every month or so, it’s worth noting that New Jersey has a much richer history in this field.
The state has some of the least restrictive laws when it comes to online casinos and sports betting, with the former being legal since 2013 and the latter back in 2018. There will have been some who might have been concerned by the fact that New York legalized the market in their state in January, and this could have had an impact on neighboring regions, but that hasn’t really come to pass as yet.
Things have been a little sluggish in terms of the sports betting area; with year-on-year revenue being significantly down, the overall revenue for gambling rose to $401 million for June 2022.
That represents a 2.2% increase in comparison to June 2021 and shows that the overall market is moving in the right direction as the knock-on effects of the pandemic start to ease.
$133m of the revenue came from online casinos operating in New Jersey, and in-person gambling across the nine Atlantic City casinos was particularly high and showed that more and more customers are flocking to their old haunts.
The year-to-date revenue for New Jersey stands at $2.43 billion, and that’s 15.2% up on 2021.
The success across Atlantic City’s in-person casinos might be checked by possible strike action that its casino workers are considering. Rodney Mills, a houseman at the Tropicana, a union steward, has commented on the reasons behind such action;
“Gas is up. Groceries are up. Everything, you name it,”
“It costs you way more than it used to, and the wages that we are currently making are not sustainable.”
That aside, the gaming industry is looking very healthy right now, and the ongoing success in New Jersey, coupled with the stellar numbers posted in New York, has led to speculation that other big states may well follow the Empire State in completing the legalization of casino and sports betting activity.
The big three, California, Texas, and Florida, are all in the process of passing such laws that would open up massive markets across the country.
Sports betting in California will appear on the ballot in November; in Florida, sports betting was temporarily legal in 2021, but this was later overturned by a federal judge, and Texas State Senator Carol Alvarado has been fighting for more than a decade to bring the matter of legal casino activity to the people and moves in that direction appear to be gathering momentum.
