New Jersey State Senator Raymond Lesniak was one of the principal architects of the state’s online gambling laws that allowed internet gambling to go live in the state in November.
And so far, he thinks New Jersey’s 14 online sites have been doing a lousy job of getting the word out and finding new players.
Lesniak spoke at a panel discussion of the iGaming North America Conference in Las Vegas. According to reports, he called the marketing efforts by Atlantic City casinos—the state’s online gambling sites are run through city casinos and their online partners—“amateurish” and said that the casinos have done a poor job of offering rewards and comps for online plat as well as linking online play to play at brick-and-mortar casinos.
Building on that, Steve Ruddock of the Newark Star-Ledger offered this breakdown of online casino marketing in New Jersey.
PartyPoker
PartyPoker is the only outfit in the New Jersey iGaming market that has put a clear emphasis on marketing efforts.
Borgata
Borgata (which is on the same network as PartyPoker) has done a decent job with advertising, even though they have been far less ambitious than their partner PartyPoker. The focus of the Borgata has been on their brick-&-mortar property, with a lot of tie-ins between the online poker room and casino and the Borgata itself.
WSOP.com
Caesars seems to be resting on their laurels and letting their World Series of Poker (WSOP) brand do the marketing for them in New Jersey.
888 Poker
888 Poker has very little presence in the New Jersey market.
Ultimate Gaming
Another company that has done very little in the way of marketing in New Jersey, and those ads they have placed have been criticized as insensitive by Lesniak.
Betfair
Betfair started out with a bang, with the first real advertising campaign in New Jersey in early November (Let’s Play NJ), but it appears they emptied their marketing budget’s coffers before the actual launch, as the site has been almost as nonexistent as a marketer in New Jersey as it has with their poker traffic.
Golden Nugget
The Golden Nugget has done a decent job using their strong brand in New Jersey to attract casino players. Like several other companies, most of the advertising done by the Golden Nugget has been on property.
Tropicana/Virgin
VirginCasino is only about a month old and yet to start a strong marketing push. Tropicana has done little to advertise its product.
