New Jersey’s online gamblers are new to online gambling and weren’t steady players at land-based casinos.
That’s the results of a new poll outlined by John Brennan of NJ.com. Brennan broke down a survey titled “New Jersey Survey Report” being offered to registrants of the Global iGaming Summit & Expo scheduled for July in San Francisco organized by Clarion Gaming.
According to Brennan, the survey of 506 online players taken in January found that fewer than 30 percent of them visit traditional casinos as much as once a month. The most common player response at 27 percent was that the players visit casinos “a couple of times a year.”
Of the players, 35 percent say they first started playing online after online gambling began in New Jersey in November. Another 17 percent say they first gambled online within the 12-month period before the official launch.
The survey says that 37 percent only gamble on state-approved sites, but 38 percent say they still use unauthorized sites they were using before legalization. Another 26 percent say they use a mix of each, according to the website.
And it seems people are traveling to New Jersey simply to play online games.
Northern New Jersey hotels may be seeing a new kind of guest since the state went live with online gambling sites in November—namely online poker players who rent rooms for overnight sessions playing on the sites.
Under New Jersey’s online gaming laws, players must be physically located in the state to play, but do not have to be residents.
The website NorthJersey.com—the online home of the Bergen Record—found several players who regularly take trips to the state for gambling sessions
According to the report, of the online players who have signed up to play in New Jersey at PartyPoker.com, 15 percent don’t live in the state. New Yorkers make up 4.4 percent of the online sign-ups on party.poker, with an additional 2.7 percent coming from Pennsylvania.
Officials at Caesars Entertainment, which operates four of Atlantic City’s 11 casinos, also told the website that their online sites such as WSOP.com are attracting many out-of-state players.
“Folks are going through the effort to sign up for this activity, either while visiting the Garden State or when they know they have future plans to be in the state and thus want to give themselves the option,” Caesars spokesman Seth Palansky told the website. “For Atlantic City to rebound, we need to attract players from outside the state to have reason to come visit again. To get them to sign up for our Total Rewards program and start gaining loyalty points will pay off for both our land-based and online businesses over the long term.”
Palansky said as many as 40 percent of Caesars online players come from outside New Jersey.
Jeffrey Haas, director of poker for party.poker, also said the number of out-of-state players is promising for long-term growth for the industry.
“Of course it matters, because we already know that people in New Jersey can play on a far more regular basis,” Haas said. “Players from around the United States who are mulling trips to Atlantic City now know they can mix in regulated online play while they visit.”
New Jersey’s online sites are also making moves to entice pros to visit—and in some cases move to—the state to play online. For example, the inaugural New Jersey Championship of Online Poker started last week at BorgataPoker.com and PartyPoker,com. The series of tournaments carries some major prize pool guarantees.
Borgata and party.poker also offered online satellites for both the live Borgata Spring Poker Open and the World Poker Tour Championship, which were held last week at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City,
Similarly, Caesars is offering online satellite in New Jersey for its World Series of Poker, even though those events will be held in Las Vegas.
“This is an area that we’ve seen, with our Las Vegas World Series of Poker event, that we’ve been able to grow both the land-based and the online business tenfold in the past decade by having the online option,” Palansky told NJ105.com in a separate interview. “So it creates new players. It creates a quicker entrance point.”
