New Jersey Online Gambling Brief January 23, 2014
It will be another week full of tournaments at New Jersey online poker rooms as the WSOP.com and NJ.PartyPoker.com host concurrent poker tournament festivals as the two sites battle for New Jersey supremacy.
The first round in the fight took place on Sunday, and was a unanimous victory for WSOP.com, as they hosted a massive $250,000 Freeroll to kick-off their Online Championships tournament series, but will market leader partypoker have the last laugh with their Pokerfest series?
In this week’s New Jersey Online Gambling Brief we’ll detail both of these tournament series; fill you in on a new iGaming bill that has been reintroduced in New Jersey; and let you know about two new online gaming sites that could be launched in the near future.
Foreign Internet Wagering Permits reintroduced in NJ
The architect of New Jersey’s online gambling law, State Senator Raymond Lesniak, is trying to expand New Jersey’s sphere of influence in the gambling world even further after reintroducing a bill that would allow foreign and interstate online gaming providers to setup shop in New Jersey.
These “Foreign Internet Wagering Permits” impose several requirements on operators.
Foremost, the operator needs to be physically located in Atlantic City, and work in conjunction with a land-based casino in AC.
The bill also calls for any “foreign compact or agreement with an interstate or foreign jurisdiction” to be “lawful and regulated.”
Finally, sports-betting cannot be part of the equation either, only authorized casino and poker games.
Essentially, New Jersey would be a sanctuary of sorts for wayward providers, although it would hardly be the tax haven that other locales like Gibraltar, as Lesniak’s bill imposes a hefty 15% tax and just to sweeten the pot a little more a 2.5% contribution to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.
The idea is that overseas operators will pay more for what Lesniak called the “stamp of approval” that would come with the oversight and regulations that are now in place in New Jersey.
Many people have scoffed at the bill’s premise and the likelihood that any foreign operator would pay such a stiff tax just for the pleasure of setting up shop in New Jersey. While I agree with this, I also see it another way.
If the bill passes (possible but not overly likely) and NJ gets zero takers (almost 100% likely) it would still help position New Jersey for interstate or international online gambling compacts down the road; it would be one less law that needed to be passed as a general framework would already be in place.
Online Championships gives WSOP.com traffic a shot in the arm
The opening event of the WSOP.com Online Championships took place on Sunday, a $250k Freeroll tournament that attracted over 3,600 players, and produced what was by far the most traffic any online poker room in New Jersey has had at one time.
It appears that some of those players also found their way to the cash game tables after busting out of the tournament, considering WSOP.com traffic is on a noticeable uptick, with average traffic now sitting at 200 cash-game players according to www.pokerscout.com’s data.
This increase (WSOP.com had been tracking at about 170 cash game players) is a near 20% increase, and you would have to imagine it’s largely due to the WSOP.com Online Championships. This is the closest WSOP.com has been to Party/Borgata since the two companies launched their online poker rooms in NJ, with the gap in average cash-game traffic now down to just 60 players: 260 for Party/Borgata and 200 for WSOP.com.
The question now becomes, can WSOP.com maintain these numbers or will they fall back to where they were prior to the tournament series.
Borgata/Party Pokerfest is for the people
WSOP.com isn’t the only New Jersey site running a tournament festival though. But unlike the three-figure buy-ins of the Online Championships, the Pokerfest series taking place at NJ.PartyPoker.com and BorgataPoker.com features events with buy-ins ranging from just $1 to $5, culminating with a $10 Main Event.
While it doesn’t have the larger guaranteed prize-pools of the Online Championships, nor is it bookended by a pair of $250k freerolls, Pokerfest is far more appealing to the masses with its small buy-ins and relatively speaking, sizable guarantees.
Click here for an in depth look at Pokerfest.
We thought you should know…
- A couple days after the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement released their December revenue numbers Betfair released some interesting data of their own, explaining some trends in demographic breakdowns—perhaps to hide the fact that their online poker room took in a total of $90 since launching?
- The Virgin Casino is expected to be launching on Friday, January 24, 2014. VirignCasino.com will be using the same software as TropicanaCasino.com, which is supplied by Gamesys. The partnership is also expected to unveil their online poker room in the not so distant future.
- Wynn Interactive has officially petitioned the NJ DGE for a transactional waiver.
