ATLANTIC CITY — When sports betting became legal in New Jersey in 2018, Atlantic City's casinos raced to build elaborate sportsbooks designed to turn watching and wagering on games into another reason to visit the resort.
Eight years later, casino analyst Anthony Marino says the industry looks considerably different.
The sportsbook isn't disappearing. But increasingly, the actual bet is being made on a phone.
"Sportsbooks, turns out, do not generate a lot of direct revenue in the state of New Jersey as a percentage against its iGaming revenue and/or its brick-and-mortar revenue," Marino said during an appearance on "The Don Williams Show" on WOND.
Marino, who has analyzed Atlantic City casino finances for decades, said the numbers illustrate how dramatically sports wagering has evolved since New Jersey won its landmark U.S. Supreme Court case clearing the way for states to legalize it.
In Atlantic City, casinos including Ocean, Resorts, Hard Rock, Tropicana and others developed dedicated sportsbook spaces with large video walls, seating, bars, betting windows and kiosks.
But the smartphone has changed how customers use them.
"If you go through a sportsbook when they're busy, you'll see a lot of people sitting, walking up, and they're holding phones in their hand, and you'll see them hit some buttons," Marino said.
"So instead of getting up and making the bet with the guy at the cage or the kiosk that's there, they're doing a bet there."
The Sportsbook as an Attraction
That doesn't necessarily mean Atlantic City's sportsbooks no longer have value.
Their role may simply be changing.
A sportsbook packed with Eagles fans on an NFL Sunday or during the Super Bowl and March Madness can still bring customers into a casino, even if many of those customers make their wagers electronically.
Marino said that may be the more important economic benefit.
"It's always argued that by operating sportsbooks, we bring in younger gamblers who not only do some wagering, through the phone or in person at the sportsbook, but they decide to walk over and maybe try slot machines, maybe sit down for a game of blackjack," Marino said.
"There's no real numbers on that, but if you talk to people in the industry, they say, yeah, that's one of the benefits of sports wagering."
Marino said football season illustrates the point particularly well.
"Every Sunday in September, October and November, I'm sure the sportsbooks in New Jersey or in Atlantic City are filled all Sunday morning with people sitting there watching the games," Marino said.
"And a lot of people actually are on-site gambling with their phone."
The distinction is important.
A customer can be physically sitting inside an Atlantic City sportsbook while technically placing a mobile wager.
Marino said casino operators can identify where mobile bets originate through geolocation technology, but he has not seen publicly available data showing what percentage of New Jersey mobile sports wagers are actually made by people physically visiting Atlantic City.
"Obviously, probably most of it is still going on at home," Marino said. "They can be anywhere in the state."
A Quiet Night at Hard Rock
Marino said a recent personal experience demonstrated how much the physical sportsbook business has changed.
He and his wife were staying at Hard Rock with friends and, after dinner, Marino decided to visit the casino's sportsbook.
"It was nine o'clock at night," he said. "The casino was really doing booming business."
The sportsbook was another matter.
"I went over there and basically it was closed," Marino said. "There was no one manning any of the windows."
The sportsbook bar was open, Marino said, and people were sitting in the area, but he saw little active wagering.
"But nobody was actively betting on anything," Marino said.
Eventually, Marino decided to make a futures bet on the Philadelphia Phillies to win the World Series and needed help learning how to use the kiosk.
It was an anecdotal experience on a single night, not evidence that Hard Rock's sportsbook is generally empty. But Marino said it illustrates the broader shift toward electronic wagering.
Online Sportsbooks Dominate
The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement continues to list online sports wagering operations associated with Atlantic City casino licensees, including Borgata, Hard Rock, Resorts and others.
Mobile wagering allows a customer to place a legal New Jersey sportsbook bet virtually anywhere within state boundaries without visiting the casino whose license is associated with the operation.
Marino said that makes interpreting casino sports wagering numbers more complicated than it might appear.
For example, he pointed to Resorts' sports wagering operation, which is associated with DraftKings, as an example of a property whose reported sports wagering revenue can be substantial even though Resorts is one of Atlantic City's smaller brick-and-mortar casino operations.
"You have to keep an eye on what's happening in the casino industry locally," Marino said.
The financial relationship between casinos and their online sportsbook partners can also vary, meaning the amount reported under a casino license should not automatically be interpreted as money retained entirely by the physical casino property.
From Betting Window to Entertainment Venue
None of that necessarily means the sportsbook experiment failed.
Instead, eight years after legalization, the physical spaces may increasingly function like sports bars and entertainment venues that happen to offer wagering rather than places where most customers need to stand at a betting window.
Visit Atlantic City continues to promote sportsbooks as resort attractions, including facilities at Borgata, Hard Rock, Ocean, Resorts, Tropicana and other properties.
The city's sportsbooks offer something a mobile app cannot: hundreds of fans watching a major game together on enormous screens while eating, drinking and spending money inside an Atlantic City casino.
That may ultimately be their most important role.
Marino said the casinos benefit when sports wagering creates excitement that brings people onto the property and exposes them to everything else the resort has to sell.
The problem for Atlantic City arises when the customer never comes.
"If someone doesn't come to Atlantic City, they not only lose the gambling revenue of that person," Marino said, "but in most cases, more importantly, they lose the non-casino revenue within a casino."
The same technology that made sports betting extraordinarily convenient has therefore created a paradox for Atlantic City.
The casinos can put a sportsbook in virtually every New Jersey customer's pocket.
The challenge is convincing those customers to get off the couch and bring that pocket — and the person carrying it — to Atlantic City.
About the Author
Scott Stephens
Scott has been an on-air personality, producer and newscaster for 30+ years. He has been a mainstay in the South Jersey Community and on the air across many different area stations. Scott can currently be heard on Kool 98.3 and News Talk 1400 & 92.3 WOND.
