Online Gambling Numbers in New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada Disappoint
July 15, 2014
New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada have legalized online gambling
but the revenues from those three states have been disappointing.
"Clearly, the results so far have not met our expectations."
said New Jersey Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff. New Jersey had
projected revenues of $180 million by fiscal 2014 but those projections
were way off. At the end of May the state had taken in just $9.3
million in revenue.
The situation in Delaware and Nevada is not much better. Delaware
was hoping for about $7.5 million in revenue for fiscal 2014 but
they will be nowhere near that number. Nevada was smart enough not
to put out a projection so they won’t look as bad. "We
just didn't feel that it would be wise to put out a number,"
Nevada State Gaming Control Board analyst Michael Lawton said, "It
was just too much unknown."
Part of the problem for the three states is that people still don’t
realize they can gamble legally online in those states. Another
issue is that the initial rollout of the software in the states
was slow and it had bugs.
The good news though is that the future for online gambling in
the U.S. is bright as improvements have been made and more big time
companies are taking an interest. Online gambling in the United
States is here and it will grow, but maybe not as fast as some people
expected.
