Yesterday, we reported on the Trump Taj Mahal and Ultimate Poker forging a partnership to bring online gambling to the state of New Jersey. Today, two more deals between Atlantic City casinos and online gaming providers have been made public.
The other Trump property in Atlantic City, Trump Plaza, has reportedly partnered with online gaming giant Betfair, according to eGaming Review. The gambling offerings will be split into two pieces: the poker room will use Amaya Gaming’s Ongame platform, while the casino games such as craps and blackjack will come from the GameAccount Network.
When the Trump Plaza’s product launches, it likely won’t bear the name Trump. In February, Trump Entertainment Resorts agreed to sell the property to the Meruelo Group, owner of the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, for the incredibly low price of $20 million. That’s right. $20 million for an Atlantic City casino. Mortgage issues have caused delays in the finalizing of the deal. Regardless of whether or not the sale is officially completed by November, the month the state of New Jersey has set for online gambling to launch, we wouldn’t expect the Plaza/Ongame/GameAccount product to have a name that has to do with the Trump Plaza.
Gaming Intelligence is also reporting today that the Tropicana casino has partnered with UK-based Gamesys. Gamesys is a casino and bingo games developer best known for its Jackpotjoy-branded games on Facebook. The company made headlines in August 2012 when it launched Bingo Friendzy on Facebook, the first real-money gambling product on the behemoth social networking site. The company also has a partnership with Caesars in the UK.
Those two partnerships now bring the number of confirmed casino/online gaming deals to nine. Here are the pairings we know of so far:
• Trump Taj Mahal – Ultimate Poker
• Trump Plaza – Betfair
• Tropicana – Gamesys
• Borgata (Boyd Gaming) – bwin.party
• Golden Nugget – Bally Technologies
• Caesars (Caesars Entertainment) – 888 Holdings
• Bally’s (Caesars Entertainment) – 888 Holdings
• Harrah’s (Caesars Entertainment) – 888 Holdings
• Showboat (Caesars Entertainment) 888 Holdings
That leaves Revel, Resorts, and the Atlantic Club up in the air. The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) has confirmed that all twelve Atlantic City casinos have filed online gaming applications, so it is assume that those three remaining casinos have formed partnerships that just haven’t been made public yet. PokerStars had been trying to purchase the Atlantic Club (which would have eliminated the need for an online partner), but that fell through.
In mid-June, the DGE informed all the casinos that they must have deals inked with online gaming partners by June 29th or risk not having their license granted before the coordinated November launch of New Jersey’s new online gaming industry.
Online poker will be of the intrastate variety in New Jersey, meaning that all players must be located within the borders of the state. The law does allow for interstate compacts, though, so agreements with other states (Nevada and Delaware are the only two others with legalized online gambling right now) could be seen in the future.
