With online gaming in New Jersey just around the corner, at least one prospective internet operator is getting started on its marketing early. London-based Betfair has launched two sites – LetsPlayNJ.com and BetfairNJ.com – to begin hyping its internet gambling offering in the Garden State.
Both websites are exactly the same and both actually display the “LetsPlayNJ.com” banner. They are well-designed and attractive, featuring a dark yellow-orange background and black and white graphics and text. To get people in the mood to gamble, the sites provide a three question quiz about various games. An airplane smoothly scrolls down the page as you advance to the next question and, in a creative touch, a large roulette wheel on the right side of the page also turns as the page scrolls.
At the end of the quiz, visitors to the sites are given an opportunity to enter their e-mail and zip code so that Betfair can keep them informed about future developments, namely the launch of online gambling in New Jersey.
Speaking of that launch, the state announced earlier this month that sites will go live on November 26th. For the five days prior to that, there will be a “soft launch” of sorts during which the sites will be tested to be sure everything is running smoothly.
Though Betfair has revved up the marketing, it has not actually been licensed yet by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE). As it says on the bottom of the two sites, “The future availability of Internet gaming services on Betfair.com in New Jersey is contingent and conditioned upon the issuance of all necessary approvals, licenses and permits by the State of New Jersey including, but not limited to, all approvals, licenses and permits required by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.”
Though the launch of online gambling in New Jersey is only a month away, the granting of licenses has been slow. To date, only the Borgata has been approved by the DGE, or at least that is the only approval that has been made public.
All online gaming operations in New Jersey must be house in one of the dozen Atlantic City casinos. As such, Betfair has partnered with Trump Plaza to offer games to players located within state borders. Each of the dozen casinos has found an online operator partner. Caesars, which owns four Atlantic City casinos – Bally’s, Caesars, Harrah’s, and Showboat – has teamed up with 888 Holdings, Trump Taj Mahal has struck a deal with Ultimate Poker, Tropicana and Gamesys are paired, Borgata and bwin.party are working together, and Resorts Casino Club has joined up with PokerStars.
Both the Revel Casino Hotel and the Atlantic Club Casino have formed partnerships, but neither has announced the details.
Wynn is also in on the action, even though it does not own a casino in New Jersey. In order to operate an online gaming site, it has inked a deal with Caesars in which one of the Caesars casinos will host Wynn’s servers.
