The return of major sports events and the re-opening of casinos after the Covid-19 pandemic have been a major boon for the New Jersey gambling industry. The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE), reported a 6.5% year on year increase in gambling revenue.
September was a major milestone in the return of professional sports. We saw the return of the NFL season, the conclusion of the NHL season, and the MLB and NBA were also in full swing. It looks like the swing back to normalcy has encouraged an increase in sports bets, gamblers staked $748.6m in September, a massive 68% increase compared to September 2019. Despite the re-opening of casinos, the majority of players placed bets online. $678.7m was staked online compared to $69.8m in person. The total gambling revenue for the state totaled $323.3m, just under $20m more than September 2019.
As always, FanDuel and PointsBet (sub-licensees of Meadowlands) led the pack in sports betting revenue for the month. They posted a combined total of $28.2m in revenue from online sports betting, a year on year increase of 66.9%. This eclipsed their competitor DraftKings, their revenue more than halved from $10.7m to $4.8m.
Outside of sports betting, the iGaming industry has been booming. This year has seen a full shut down of casinos in New Jersey, and even now that they are open, they can only operate at 25% capacity.
In-person slot machines still make up most of the total gambling revenue for the state, $144m this month alone, but there has been a marked decline. The $144m total is a decrease of 9.6%.
In terms of overall performance, the total gambling revenue for New Jersey as of the end of September is $1.94bn, compare that to September of last year, $2.58bn, a decrease of 24.8%. While this is a significant reduction, the results could have been much worse considering the pandemic.
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