The details are finally here. The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement has revealed the December revenue online gaming totals for the state, so we now know just how well online casino, poker and sports betting fared in 2019. New Jersey continues to break records each and every month and December helped close out an amazing year for the iGaming industry.
December Details
Online casino and poker sites in the state were able to generate $49.3 million in December. Online sportsbooks generated an additional $29.4 million. This brings the combined total of all three markets to close to $80 million. For the year, New Jersey online gaming operators earned over $700 million from all verticals. Online casinos generated over $460 million.
For online casino and poker gaming, the December total of $49,327,957 broke the previous record set in November. Online casino revenue by itself came in at $47,539,143 which is a slight decline. Online poker actually increased believe it or not, with $1,734,814 in revenues earned. Revenue was up over 70% when compared to November.
As always, the Golden Nugget was the big winner. They earned online casino revenues of just over $17 million. This is amazingly over 1/3 of the market. The brand continues to be the one to beat and the second place finisher is still many millions behind.
Resorts pulled in the second-place spot, earning $11.95 million in December, a new record for the brand. With the addition of DraftKings Casino, Resorts has easily taken over the number two spot from the Borgata and is the one to beat aside from the Golden Nugget of course.
For the Borgata, the brand managed to end the year with $9.2 million in December revenues. They continue to build on monthly revenues to stay in the top three.
Big Drops
A few of the online gaming operators saw moderate declines in December. The biggest drop was seen by the Ocean Resort Casino. The operator dropped just over 81% from November, earning just $478,717. For the year, the brand was down just over 78%.
Only two other operators saw a month to month decrease, Caesars and the Golden Nugget. The Golden Nugget still did well of course but were down just over 8% from November. For Caesars, the brand came in at 5.62% lower than their November total.
Sports Betting Details
Now on to sports betting. This sector is considered aside from online casino and poker gaming. The total sports betting numbers for December, land-based and online, come in at $29.4 million. Online sports betting created the bulk of the revenues at $25.5 million.
In November, $488 million wagers were placed which caused a win of over $25 million. However, the numbers were only about 90% of the legal sports bets placed. FanDuel continues to be the top operator in the region, bringing in a majority of the action online.
For the year, sports betting brought in around $240 million. In taxes, the state and local municipalities earned over $40 million.
For 2019, many analysts felt that the online gaming industry would begin to stabilize or even show a dip in earnings. However, that was not the case. The state continues to see gains and they are really showing no sign of slowing down. It will be interesting to see the first few months totals in 2020 to determine if the industry can only continue to grow from here or if the time for stabilization has arrived.