New Jersey March Revenue: Online Casinos Outperform Regular Casinos

The Garden State once again saw iGaming numbers eclipse those of the traditional brick-and-mortar casinos dotting the boardwalk in March. While the total take exceeded $243 million for the month, marking a 23% gain over March 2024, there were definitely some winners and losers among the online casino operators.

On a winning roll was Golden Nugget Online Casino, which, somewhat confusingly, is owned by DraftKings, not the Landry group, which owns the land-based Golden Nuggets. DraftKings purchased the rights to the spun-off online casinos in 2022 and continues to bring that DraftKings panache to the brand, with $12 million in revenue in March, compared to almost $8 million this time last year.

While BetMGM’s two offerings, BetMGM Online Casino and Borgata Online Casino, still trail behind FanDuel Online Casino and DraftKings Online Casino in the New Jersey casino market, they both bounced up this month. 

Borgata Online Casino was up an impressive 23%, reaching $22.4 million, but BetMGM Online Casino’s classic site was up a whopping 42% to $31 million. DraftKings Online Casino remains firmly in second place with a 22% increase to $49.5 million, while FanDuel Online Casino holds its position at the top with $52.2 million and a strong 25% growth.

Those who struggled in the month included Tropicana Online Casino, down 25.2%, and Oceans Online Casino, down 21.2%. Bigger names such as ESPN BET, Penn National Gaming's combination sportsbook and casino, experienced a 14.3% decline in revenue, while Bally Online Casino, an online casino monopoly in Rhode Island, saw a decline of slightly over 500k in revenue, or about 8%.

For the second month in a row, iGaming edged out brick-and-mortar casino revenue from the nine casinos in Atlantic City. While the numbers for the land-based casinos were still a respectable $230 million, down just 3.7% from last year, what was inescapable was the across-the-board drop in year-over-year revenue for the month. 

Borgata Casino, which is far and away the largest revenue producer for boardwalk casinos, managed to eke out a $3 million increase, bringing in a pretty astounding $58.3 million. Note that this is a larger piece of revenue than any of the online operators manage to bring in. 

Hard Rock Casino was essentially dead even with an increase of slightly more than $100,000 compared to last March. Their haul of 44.4 million comfortably leaves them in second place. Still, besides the top two, all the other operators were down. Some, like Oceans and Golden Nugget Casino, declined significantly, with both down 14% compared to last March. This resulted in $4 million less for Oceans Casino and $2 million less for Golden Nugget Casino. Caesars Palace Casino also experienced double-digit drops of around $2 million, or roughly 10%.

Since Atlantic City is considerate enough to break out slots vs. table game revenue, we have zero trouble pointing our finger at the culprit for the decline. The revenue from slots in the region remained relatively stable at $173 million, with a slight year-over-year increase. Table games, on the other hand, dropped to $57.2 million in the region, representing a 14% decline. The downturn in table game revenue appears to be the single biggest drag on total earnings for the shore casinos, suggesting fewer high rollers or decreased hold percentages.

But many operators saw much worse than those averages, with Ocean Casino experiencing a precipitous fall in revenue of almost 40%. Both the Golden Nugget and Caesars Palace Casino also faced a tough comparable, with slumps of 34% and 30%, respectively.

While there were definitely some winners and losers across both online and brick-and-mortar casinos, as well as huge variations between slot performance and table game wins even within the same casino, the state saw an overall uptick of about 3.7% to a very respectable $546 million revenue month, of which almost $60 million was sent to Trenton in the form of taxes.  

With online casino growth showing no signs of slowing and land-based venues continuing to face headwinds, especially in table games, New Jersey’s casino landscape may be tilting permanently toward digital dominance.