According to several reports, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) has now granted licenses to five prospective online gambling operators in the state. It has been a relatively slow process; at the end of July, the DGE confirmed that 37 applications had been filed and no doubt more have been filed since.
The latest casino to receive its license is the Tropicana Casino and Resort, located on the famous Boardwalk between Brighton and South Iowa Avenues. The other four that were already given the thumbs up are the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, and the Golden Nugget.
According to the state’s regulations for intrastate online gambling, all servers and related equipment must be located on the premises of one of the dozen Atlantic City casinos. Obviously, this means that those casinos have a leg up on anyone else when it’s time to flip the switch, but other operators are not excluded. In fact, Wynn Resorts Limited, which does not have a property in Atlantic City, has made a deal with Caesars that will have Caesars host Wynn’s servers in one of its four casinos in the New Jersey gambling hub.
Aspiring operators can also partner with an Atlantic City casino to get in on the action. All twelve of the casinos have, in fact, formed such partnerships. Caesars will be working with 888 Holdings, Trump Taj Mahal has partnered with Ultimate Poker, bwin.party will provide the software for the Borgata, the aforementioned Tropicana is working with Gamesys, Resorts Casino Hotel will join with PokerStars, and the Golden Nugget has partnered with both Bally Technologies and Amaya Gaming.
Both the Revel Casino Hotel and the Atlantic Club Casino have formed partnerships, but neither has announced the details.
The New Jersey DGE has circled November 26th as the official date that online gambling will go live in the state, with a five day “soft launch” immediately preceding that day. Unlike Nevada, where operators may only offer internet poker, operators in New Jersey are permitted to offer any game that can be found in the brick and mortar casinos. Thus, in addition to poker, customers will be able to play games like craps, roulette, blackjack, and slots. Games are restricted to players 21-years old and over who are located within the borders of New Jersey.
Legal, regulated online poker has been live in Nevada since the end of April, when Ultimate Poker launched. Caesars’ WSOP.com launched in September. New Jersey’s upcoming virtual ribbon cutting is highly anticipated in the industry, as New Jersey is the 11th most populous state in the U.S. with nearly 9 million residents and should be able to provide a solid amount of traffic to the gambling sites. To increase the size of the market, it is entirely possible that New Jersey will form an interstate compact with Nevada and/or Delaware (which will launch its online gaming industry next week), allowing their residents to play on any of the states’ gaming sites.
There are still some global poker rooms that accept U.S. customers, though they have become few and far between. Click here for more details on the U.S. poker industry.
