With less than a week to go to Sunday’s Super Bowl 53 betting bonanza, an 8th Atlantic City Casino, Hard Rock, anticipates starting both online and land-based sports bets.
The casino received permission late on Friday from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to begin “soft-play” testing of equipment and systems for online betting.
The testing is reported to have been successfully completed on Saturday. Hard Rock president hoped to be ready in the next day or so to open their betting doors to the public. This includes both online and via betting windows.
What Now?
Hard Rock, expected to be the last Atlanta City Casino to open a sportsbook for a while, will join a New Jersey industry that has been overwhelmingly successful since the Supreme Court struck down the PSAPA federal act that for two decades had forbid sports betting in most US States outside of Nevada.
The Garden State, who led the fight to have PSPA declared unconstitutional and was the first to legalize it when this occurred in May last year, already boasts nine other online sportsbooks with ties to New Jersey Casinos and Race Courses.
They include first-to-open DraftKings, fellow Daily Sports Fantasy giant FanDuel, Play Sugarhouse, BetStars, and 888sports, PlayMGM, William Hill, Caesars and lastly PointsBet which only opened its doors earlier this month.
Since mid-June, the nine sportsbooks have generated $1.25 billion in betting handle. Most of this revenue is from online wagering and just over $94 million in revenue. The state earned $10.4 million via its sports betting taxes.
Nevada, where, because of special circumstances, sports betting has never been illegal, still rules the roost in this industry. But New Jersey, whose sportsbook handle has so far outstripped all seven of the other states, is catching up fast.
