New Jersey allows flexible borders for online gambling

Mattingley’s London-based company has a partnership with Caesars Interactive in Atlantic City.

The issue at stake is the buffer between the state line and a gambler's location, which is determined using cellphone signals. To ensure that a gambler was on the Camden side of the Delaware River rather than the Philadelphia side, an undefined buffer was required in the system to block people too close to the border. The process is called geolocation.

"We have worked with the geolocation vendors and casinos to enhance the technology to make it more accurate and reliable, and to reduce false negatives," said Kerry Langan, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.

New Jersey gambling revenue for February is scheduled for release Wednesday. In January, gamblers lost us$ 9.5 million on the Internet.

Fitch Ratings said Friday that it expected Internet gambling revenue to increase throughout this year, approaching a total of us$ 200 million for the operators. That would be an average of us$17.3 million from February through December.

Long-term, Fitch estimated that the New Jersey online gambling market was worth between us$ 500 million and us$ 700 million.

Mattingley said he had little hope that federal regulations will be adopted for Internet gambling. He said he thinks online gambling will spread state by state, as did brick-and-mortar casinos.

Pennsylvania is among the states often mentioned by analysts as likely adopters of Internet gambling. "We are in discussion with the regulator of Pennsylvania. I met with them a fortnight ago," Mattingley said on a January investors' conference call. A potential budget shortfall "will raise the interest in online gaming," he said.