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New Jersey's iGaming Wins Over $100m 4 Months in A Row
By Jeff Osienya Jul 19, 2021 IndustryThe Garden State is on a roll. iGaming has seen nine-figure revenues for the fourth straight month as sports betting action continues to lead nationally. Overall, June is NJ’s best month in history for casino gaming and sports betting combined.New Jersey continues with its winning streak after online casinos, and poker rooms in the state collected more than $100 million in revenue for the fourth month running in June. Data published by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE) on Friday indicates that Garden State saw a total revenue of $107.1 million from online casinos and poker rooms last month. This is a slight dip from May’s $108.2 million win, but 26.1% higher than the $84.91 million revenue NJ saw in June 2020.
Meanwhile, May had seen a marginal 5% boost from the $107.7 million that the online gaming vertical had collected for April. On the other hand, March holds the current all-time iGaming monthly record, as online casino games and poker generated $113 million in revenue to start New Jersey’s hot streak in style.
Generally speaking, the first 6 months of 2021 have been golden for the Garden State for online casinos and poker rooms. With a $101.03 million haul, January started New Jersey’s iGaming calendar the year with a bang, earning the state its first-ever nine-figure revenue from the vertical.
This stellar performance puts New Jersey right on track to break the $1 billion ceiling for its revenue. So far, iGaming has yielded $643.2 million in revenue. Should the second half of the year maintain the same impressive showing, then the Garden State will easily cross the billion-dollar revenue milestone. In 2020, the state produced a revenue of $970.3 million for the entire calendar year.
NJ Sports Betting Continues to Shine
Last year, the Garden State seized the USA's sports betting trophy after edging out Nevada, and from the look of things so far, the title isn’t going anywhere. According to the data released by the NJDGE on Friday, online and retail sportsbooks in the state facilitated $766.9 million worth of bets in June.
While the figure is 5.8% lower than the $814 million handle collected in May, it is still an impressive jump from pandemic-stricken June 2020, which was only $117.8 million. Plenty of live sporting events have made a comeback after many of them were canceled last year due to the Coronavirus. Well, it’s also worth pointing out that over the past two years, sports betting has also expanded dramatically, from recording just $9.7 million in June 2019.
As for gross gaming revenue (GGR), sportsbook in June generated $71.3 million last month, which is second only to January’s record of $82.6 million. From this performance, operators won 34.7% more revenue compared to the $52.9 million recorded for May 2021 and a whopping 82.3% more year over year. From all this action, the state received $10.5 million more for its coffers as taxes in June.
June's Overall Gaming Revenue Sets New All-Time Monthly Record
Looking at the overall gaming industry – land-based and online casino gaming plus retail and online sports betting, the Garden State also had its best month yet, with commercial gaming revenue worth $392.8 million. To put this performance into perspective, in June 2020, NJ’s entire industry only saw $97.6 million in gaming revenue, of course, due to the ranging pandemic. That’s a year-over-year increase of more than 302%!
Predictably, land-based casinos were the biggest contributors to this shining record as they have been operational (albeit with some restrictions) for the entire first half of 2021. The brick-and-mortar casinos managed to generate the lion’s share of the revenue at $214.5 million, with slot machines yielding $154.1 million and table games generating $60.4 million.
However, if we pay more attention to the numbers, increased online play is actually the reason behind this surge. In June 2019, only $38 million came from online gaming, whereas iGaming won over $107 million from NJ gamblers last month. In contrast, for June 2019, the same nine brick-and-mortar casinos in Atlantic City collected $168.3 million and $67.7 million in GGR from slot machines and table games, respectively.
All in all, June’s $392.8 million overall win marks another lucky streak for New Jersey as May was also a record month for the state’s gross gaming revenue following a $374.2 million win. The previous record was seen over a decade ago, in July 2010, when the state recorded $364.0 million in revenue.
Since the beginning of 2021, NJ’s gaming revenue currently sits at $2.1 billion, 105% more than what the state had collected for the first six months of 2020.
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