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The New Up and Coming Industry that has Atlantic City Casinos Shaking in their Boots

The New Up and Coming Industry that has Atlantic City Casinos Shaking in their Boots

People simply aren’t hitting the casinos in Atlantic City like they used to. To highlight this phenomenon, we can compare this trend to Nevada’s casino industry who lost $662 million dollars in 2015 alone and has not managed to profit for the past six years. Atlantic City’s gaming industry suffers a similar fate. The trend reached rock bottom in 2009 when the industry suffered a crippling loss of 6.8 billion.

As CNN Money’s Cristina Alesci correctly noted, in the last ten years, the average customer age has dropped by a staggering twelve years and people are spending less. One notable example is the The Cosmopolitan. Often referred to as The Cosmo, the Cosmopolitan is a luxury resort casino. The resort opened on December 15, 2010 and has still not managed to turn a profit to date.

The main challenge faced by casino operators is that instead of hitting the slot machines and black jack tables, casino goers are opting for the entertainment experience offered by Atlantic City hotels.

According to Mike Lawton, senior research analyst for the Gaming Control Board “The Strip is at an all-time high in revenue” he noted, due to hotel rooms, the largest spending segment after gaming, retail and entertainment. “But gaming is lagging. That’s why we’re losing money.”

But what the Gaming Control Board member seems to be overlooking, is the increasing popularity of online casinos.

The online casino industry currently boasts an estimated 173 million gamers worldwide that are constantly scrambling the internet to find the best online casinos. This is the reason we see many online casino comparison sites such as top10bestonlinecasinos.co.uk and others while the industry’s revenue is projected to grow to an astounding $2.5 billion dollars. The same way the internet has changed the way we shop, communicate with people and follow the news, so too has it changed the way we play our favorite casino games.

According to Forbes, online gaming or ‘iGaming’, as it is often called, has progressed into a multibillion dollar business, especially in Europe.

Another boost for the igaming industry came in 2013 from various U.S states including Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware who have introduced legislation to legalize igaming. Meanwhile California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania have all began introducing a process of legalizing online gaming in one form or another.

To get an idea of the potential impact igaming can have on the offline casino industry’s economy, igaming was launched in the state of New Jersey on November 26 2013, and grossed $8.3 million by the end of that year. Data shows that New Jersey’s igaming industry grossed $262 million in generated revenue in 2014 and is projected to reach $463 million by 2017. In fact, neutral forecasters are claiming that the United States. Is projected to earn an estimated total revenue of over $7.4 billion by 2017, representing approximately 30% of the igaming market.

But the Atlantic City brick and mortar casino owners are not taking this encroachment on their market share lying down. A massively well-funded campaign by various casino moguls has been launched to lobby the U.S congress to limit the growth and legalization of online casinos.

Whether their lobbying efforts will succeed or not, is yet to be seen.

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