Up In Smoke
New Jersey lawmakers failed to pass legislation that would have removed an exemption that allows smoking in casinos. What went wrong?
The Bulletin Board
NEWS: An effort to prohibit smoking in Atlantic City casinos has been put on the back burner.
BEYOND the HEADLINE: What Atlantic City needs.
NEWS: New Jersey online gambling revenue has come a long way in a decade.
VIEWS: Attendance at three recent major tournament series points to a possible poker revival.
NEWS: New Hampshire casino owner pushes back against allegations of misappropriated COVID relief funds. Online gambling could hinge on the case.
AROUND the WATERCOOLER: What poker needs.
STRAY THOUGHTS: 100th newsletter.
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New Jersey Punts on AC Casino Smoking Ban
All signs pointed to Atlantic City casinos becoming smoke-free establishments, but that dream ended when New Jersey State Sen. Joe Vitale, who chairs the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, said he doesn’t have the votes.
“We’re pulling it off the agenda,” Vitale told POLITICO Wednesday.
The effort to remove the casino exemption from the 2006 law prohibiting smoking at most indoor facilities began as soon as the law was passed. The effort began to gain traction in recent years, and it appeared destined to pass during the current lame-duck session.
That’s when everything went off the rails. A planned November vote in the Health Committee was delayed after several lawmakers pulled their support to hear more about the industry’s concerns and potential amendments.
Global Gaming Business’s Roger Gros tweeted, “So apparently Sen. Polistina is writing a new bill that will be a “compromise” to the casinos. The compromise was initially the 25% of the floor that was supposedly open to smoking but never enforced. There should be NO COMPRISE with [the] health of casino workers or with casino guests.”
“It is disappointing that after two years of advocating and building support with our colleagues, we still do not have the necessary support in the legislature to get a full smoking ban passed,” State Sen. Vince Polistina said. “The casinos believe that they can meet our goal of eliminating employee and patron exposure to secondhand smoke with a structured plan and additional capital investment into their properties over the next couple of years. Given that their concerns about potential job loss and closures have resonated with some lawmakers, this is the direction I believe we need to go so that we don’t lose momentum on this issue.”
Per the New Jersey Monitor, the current push isn’t officially over:
“Casino workers also called on Senate President Nicholas Scutari to bring the measure to the floor of the Senate for an expedited vote. The bill is sponsored by 23 members of the Senate — more than enough for it to win passage. Gov. Phil Murphy has said he would sign the bill if it passes.”
Beyond the Headline: Can AC Future-Proof its Casino Industry?
In addition to the smoking ban debate, a recent article in Global Gaming Business by Michael Pollock got me thinking about Atlantic City.
Thinking about Atlantic City is something I did a lot of over the last decade when I was immersed in the launch of online gambling in New Jersey. More recently, with expansion happening at a lightning pace, Atlantic City is no longer front of mind, but it’s still a locale I am very intrigued by.
Atlantic City is synonymous with gambling. Las Vegas might be the gambling capital of the world, but as someone fond of gambling history, I think Atlantic City has a far more exciting story.
One reason is time. Atlantic City’s transformation into a casino resort town is less than 50 years old. Many people, from Roger Gros to Michael Pollock to David Schwartz to several others that are slipping my mind, have seen the transformations first-hand, and unlike early Vegas, the stories aren’t folklore.
Atlantic City also has the better gambling story arc, filled with ups and downs.
Atlantic City reminds me of a pizza parlor in my hometown that constantly failed. It was a never-ending cycle of grand openings and grand closings, as the next owner came along thinking they could right the ship. The issue wasn’t the pizza or the management. It was the location. And therein lies Atlantic City’s real problem.
In the modern world of convenience everything, Atlantic City is an inconvenience. The closest major airport is Philadelphia, an hour’s ride away. That means Atlantic City is a regional casino town, not a destination casino town (at least not for high-end play and shows).
That wasn’t a problem in the past when Atlantic City was the most convenient gambling option.
In 1983, there were zero casinos on the way from my house to Atlantic City. It’s a long drive, but it was the only game in town, so people took the trip. In 2023, I could drive from my house in Southern Massachusetts to a dozen casinos within 90 minutes or so.
And as Harry Hurley of WPG Talk Radio pointed out, this will be an even bigger problem when casinos become a reality in New York City.
“The priorities of Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small just don’t line up with the critical issues that the City is facing at the present time,” Hurley wrote in an op-ed earlier this month. “New York City casinos are coming.” Hurley estimates Atlantic City has two years to get its act together to deal with the looming threat.
Atlantic City needs to give people a reason to visit, and right now, that reason doesn’t exist. Why would I travel to Atlantic City if I can get the same or better experience closer to home?
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New Jersey Online Gambling Has Come a Long Way
Sticking with New Jersey, the state’s online casinos generated $171 million in revenue in November.
To put that number into perspective, in 2014, the state’s first full year of legal online casinos, the industry generated $122.8 million in revenue for the entire year. Let me repeat: $123 million for the entire industry over the entire year.
In December 2014, Borgata was the biggest revenue generator at $3.6 million for the month. In November 2023, Golden Nugget was the top online casino at more than $50 million for the month. Borgata’s combined online revenues (casino and sports) approached $100 million in November.
It’s a pretty wild number to think about. It took an entire industry a year to put up the numbers a single operator can reach in a month in 2023.
Equally as astounding, online gambling now accounts for nearly half of all gambling revenue generated in New Jersey.
Major Poker Tournament Series are Thriving
Poker is back, baby! And no, I’m not talking about Poker Twitter’s recent debates over Norman Chad’s latest noncontroversial but somehow controversial comments, Scotty Nguyen going Borat on the Ladies Event final table, or cheating.
As I noted last week, the World Series of Poker Paradise series was highly successful. It should also be noted the WSOP pulled it off with some stiff competition (the World Poker Tour Championship and the PokerStars EPT Prague series) overlapping the final days of the series.
The WPT Championship was well-attended with 3,835 entries (a single reentry was permitted) but fell short of its ambitious $40 million guarantee. However, the tournament’s handling of the overlay situation was widely applauded on Poker Twitter.
The EPT Prague Main Event produced another 1,285 entries, putting the total number of entries in the WSOP, WPT, and EPT main events over 8,000. That’s a pretty solid number, considering they all took place within a few days of one another.
WSOP Main Event started on December 9
The WPT Championship began on December 12
EPT Prague Main Event began on December 11
Now, if only we could get a few states to legalize online poker.
NH Casino Owner Pushes Back Against Fraud Charges
Embattled New Hampshire casino owner Andy Sanborn has “requested to appeal the state Lottery Commission’s August decision to permanently revoke his gaming operator’s license,” the AP reports.
Sanborn, whose wife is a prominent New Hampshire lawmaker, is accused of misappropriating some of the $844,000 in COVID relief funds he received to purchase multiple cars and to pay himself rent of more than $180,000.
Sanborn is accused of sloppy and possibly nefarious record-keeping, but Sanborn’s attorney has called the investigation sloppy.
“It’s an incomplete story that has yawning gaps in the evidence that are the result of an incomplete and, frankly, sloppy investigation,” his attorney, Mark Knights, said.
In response, Lottery Commission auditor Leila McDonough called Sanborn the most difficult casino owner to work with and testified that Sanborn doesn’t take compliance as seriously as his peers.
“He’s been the most difficult and challenging to work with. He doesn’t seem to think that rules and laws apply to him,” McDonough said.
The case is of interest to online gambling supporters due to Sanborn’s wife’s role in the legislature, where she voted against online casino legalization in 2022. After the investigation into her husband’s business, Sanborn resigned as the chair of the Commission to Study the Effect of Recent Changes Made to the Charitable Gaming Laws, Including the Newly Authorized Historical Horse Races.
“Rep. Sanborn chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, which is where an online casino legalization bill died last year after the Senate passed it. The main opposition to online casinos came from the state’s charity casinos - Sanborn’s husband owns the casino in Concord and was preliminary approved to open another before the criminal investigation was announced.”
Around the Watercooler
Social media conversations, rumors, and gossip.
One of the “good for poker” scenarios the community is waiting on is a female Champion, or even a female at the WSOP Main Event final table, which has occurred just once in the tournament’s history, Barbara Enright, in 1995.
The only female to capture an open WPT title was Ema Zajmović, who won the WPT Playground Main Event in 2017 - a second-tier stop on the tour.
Considering the surge in interest, poker could catch lightning in a bottle should a female capture the WPT Championship or final table or win the WSOP Main Event in 2024.
With 45 players left, a couple of prominent female players are still vying for the WPT Championship, including one of the best tournament players in the game, Kristen Foxen.
Stray Thoughts
Achievement unlocked: 100 newsletters.
Again, thank you to everyone who has supported this project. Every subscription, every share, and every mention matters.
To my growing list of paid subscribers, I will add some extra perks in the new year, including the long-awaited podcast.