Atlantic City’s casino revenue figures for May continued to show positive signs for the resort’s remaining casinos with a healthy bump in online gaming revenue for the month.
Atlantic City’s eight casinos saw their revenue increase by 5.3 percent in May compared with a year ago. Online gambling revenue increased more than 19 percent over May 2014 to $12.5 million, but was down slightly from April 2015.
Overall revenue for the city was still down by 9 percent when counting the revenue from three casinos that closed in 2014, but were operating in May 2014. And despite the increase in online revenue for slots and casino games, online poker play in the state continues to decline.
The casinos won $208.6 million from gamblers last month. More than $156.9 million came from slot machines and $51.6 million from table games.
“That’s a strong showing for what our detractors say is a weak market,” said Matt Levinson, chairman of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. “Whether you look at the results for the one month or for the first five months of this year, total gaming revenue is up for the current operators. The size of the market may be smaller, but the health of the current operators is getting stronger.”
Five of the city’s eight casinos saw increases last month, led by Caesars casino. The casino had an especially poor month in May 2014 with major losses at table games.
Caesars was up 51 percent to $27.7 million; the Golden Nugget was up more than 33 percent to $22.5 million; Resorts was up 19.6 percent to $14.4 million, Harrah’s was up 8.2 percent to $33.3 million, and the Tropicana was up 2.3 percent to $27.6 million.
The largest decrease was at the Trump Taj Mahal, which is still mired in an uncertain takeover bid by billionaire investor Carl Icahn. The casino’s revenue was down 14.5 percent to $18.4 million.
Bally’s was down more than 12 percent to $18.1 million, and the Borgata was down 4.7 percent to $56.1 million.
In the online arena, Caesars Interactive NJ saw its revenue decrease by 6 percent to $2.6 million.
That could be reflective of an overall drop in online poker revenue as Caesars operates WSOP.com in the state. Online poker revenues fell 2.5 percent compared with April 2015 and were down 15 percent from May 2014.
Online poker revenue totaled $1,928,106 in May, a 2.9 percent drop from April’s total of $1,985,289.
The slumping online poker revenues have led to renewed calls for the state to enter into multi-jurisdictional gambling agreements with other states that offer online gambling. So far, that’s just Nevada and Delaware, but those two states have already signed an agreement to pool poker players.
Borgata and its partners Party Poker and Pala Casino took 37 percent and the lead in the online market.
For the first five months of this year, the casinos have taken in just under $1 billion, an improvement of nearly 4 percent over the same time period last year. But when the now-closed casinos are included, that figure represents a 10.5 percent decrease.
