New Jersey eyes sports betting to grow casino-hotel market

The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement said last week that combined sales of US$ 2.88 billion for the casino-hotel industry through the end of September was just 0.2 percent better than during the same period last year. While gaming win has rebounded slightly thanks to internet betting in the equation, the industry at large continues to struggle.

The figure includes gaming win, revenue from hotel rooms and other amenities. It also factors in third party business sales that aren’t included in revenue generated by the casinos directly.
In the first nine months of the current year, despite an 89.2 percent hotel occupancy rate being 3.4 percentage points greater than the same period last year, revenue from the rooms fell nearly five percent.

Regulators also said that gross operating profit for the industry was US$ 561.2 million, an increase of 19.8 percent compared to January 1 to September 30 of last year. The casino-hotel industry has shed costs while its revenue has stagnated. Gaming win, the most-used barometer for the vitality of the industry, reached a high of US$ 5.2 billion in 2006 and then was halved over the next 10 years.

In September 2016, the Trump Taj Mahal was gearing up to close its doors the following month, which left the gambling town with just seven brick-and-mortar casinos. If you exclude revenue generated from the Taj Mahal last year, total revenue for the industry’s “current operators” grew about seven percent through September.