This week’s casino news starts off in New Jersey where the state is reporting record sports betting revenues. Let’s dive into the latest report as we move towards the end of the year.
Revenue Record Broken Again By New Jersey Sportsbooks During November
Sportsbooks in New Jersey just keep on smashing records. The state that’s been a leader in online and land-based sports betting just set a new high watermark. In the month of November, the Garden State broke its record in revenue from sportsbooks in a single month. They brought in $114.8 million in profit, breaking the previous monthly high. This comes off of $1.3 billion in handle, which is the total value of bets placed overall.
However, there are some potential headwinds up ahead as the state of New York is going to be legalizing mobile sports betting within the next couple of months. That’s a drastic change that could take a lot of their bettors away from New Jersey and pull them towards New York. We don’t know the exact numbers but there is the perception that some New Yorkers have been betting in New Jersey. It is widely expected that the Empire State will, in fact, be the go-to-market for sports betting.
Nonetheless, sports gambling revenue was able to take a massive 52.2 percent increase in year-over-year earnings and it’s only growing. New Jersey continues to prove that they are doing just fine in their bounce back from the start of the pandemic.
Chicago City Council Aims To Allow Sports Betting At Professional Sports Stadiums
Fans of professional sports teams in the Chicago area could be in for a huge treat in the next few months. The state was able to pass a proposal, which would allow professional sports stadiums to offer sports betting inside their arenas. Other teams in Washington D.C. and in Arizona are already allowed to offer sportsbooks onsite and now it looks like that’s paved the way for Chicago to join them.
There is a lot of support behind this new proposal and with a final vote looming this week, the heavy expectations are that this passes. However, Neil Bluhm is most certainly against the change. The owner of Rush Street Gaming believes that this new idea could put his new casino in the state at an immediate disadvantage. He also claims that doing so would cost them about $10 million to $12 million each year on top of that. He’s concerned that sports bettors will bet on-site rather than through the apps or other land-based casinos. It is yet to be known if his pleas will be taken into account for this upcoming decision, but at the moment it seems likely that sportsbooks will be coming to Chicago stadiums in the not-so-distant future.
MGM Resorts Sells Strip Casino To Seminole Tribe
MGM Resorts continues to tweak and tinker with its portfolio in Las Vegas. The latest that was recently announced was that they sold the Mirage to Hard Rock International recently. The property was flipped for an estimated $1.08 billion. The deal has to be approved by regulators before anything is made official, but that decision won’t be made until at least the end of 2022. If everything goes smoothly, the Mirage will be renamed the Hard Rock Las Vegas.
The CEO of Hard Rock Jim Allen also said that all 3,500 employees that come with the sale of the Mirage will be able to keep their jobs. He continued by mentioning that they plan on entering into a long-term lease on their real estate.
The poker room in the Mirage was never able to reopen after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, eventually being replaced by slot machines. Although, that may change now that it is in the hands of a new company soon and that the pandemic is (hopefully) receding.