The New Jersey sports betting industry started the New Year in January on a high and continued to fly in February.
The Garden State’s Division of Gaming Enforcement has reported that its sportsbooks’ total handle for February of $494.61was once again way up on the same month last year
Although 6.8% down on the previous month’s $554,113, it was up a whopping 54.5% up on the total handle reported for the same month in 2019.
That online betting is the way to go was also once more glaringly apparent.
The State’s total online handle for February was $436.49 million, or 68% higher than February 2019’s online handle of $258.8 million. As a percentage of total handle, New Jersey’s February online intake moved up again to a record 88.2% of total handle.
Retail betting continued its downward slide
Retail betting, meanwhile, continued to slide compared to last year. The retail handle for February 2020 was $58.32 million compared to last year’s $61.49 million.
That is a 5.4% drop that is sure to plunge even further with the arrival in the US of the Coronavirus pandemic
Without March Madness and most live other sports to bet on, March and April are going to hit the US betting industry very hard indeed.
New Jersey’s resourceful Casinos with their online sportsbooks will still find items to bet on, you can be sure. And because their patrons can place bets from home on their smart phones and lap tops, it could help see them through the hard times.
It’s difficult, on the other hand, to see any joy for those Casinos like New York State’s which are prohibited from offering online betting or gambling.
New York’s Casinos totally reliant on in-person betting
They rely totally on person-to-person retail betting or on one-arm bandits and card-dealing gaming tables.
Revenue-wise, February with $17m was nowhere near as good for NJ’s sportsbooks as January’s $53.6m. But the two months combined took the State’s year-to-date tally to $70.6m.
That’s more than double its revenue total of $31.5m for the same two months last year and shows a very healthy trend.
This upward trend, of course, is sure to reverse in the next month or two as sports arenas stay closed and the players and their fans stay home.
But if any one sports’ betting state is going to best survive the world wide crisis, it is sure to be New Jersey with its hugely successful online betting set-up.
NJ get 25% of handle from across the Hudson
Along with a population of around nine million it is estimated that 25% of its monthly intake of bets comes from New Yorkers. To get around the Wire Act which prohibits across-state-line- betting, they simply slip across the Hudson River and make their bets in NJ territory
Nevada, the longtime US leader of Casino gaming and sports betting also offers online wagering. However with a population four times smaller than New Jersey’s, it has had to rely a lot more on fly-in, retail punters from California and Texas.
And with the Coronavirus pandemic on the go, it’s precisely these type of punters who are going to dry-up quickest.