Some online sports betting companies have elected to shut down services in New Jersey over the past few months.
One that has long been absent from the Garden State scene, however, should be making its debut within the next few months.
During the company’s most recent earnings call, Bally’s Corp. announced that it would introduce its online sportsbook in four states before the end of the year, including the NJ sports betting market.
As Robeson Reeves, CEO of Bally’s, said during the call:
“Furthermore, with the ongoing successful rollouts of Bally Bet across our markets, we’re generating improved volumes and profitability, particularly as the transition onto Kambi and White Hat platforms has gotten good customer feedback and helped us differentiate our offering. We expect to launch sports in an additional four states in the second half of the year and continue to plant the seeds for expanded iGaming across our geographies.”
Bally’s looks to launch online sports betting in New Jersey in ’24
As Reeves indicated, Bally’s has enjoyed an uptick in online casino gaming, including Bally’s Online Casino NJ but mostly thanks to a monopoly the company enjoys in Rhode Island.
Bally’s also went live with online sports betting in Massachusetts recently, which fell in line with the company’s overall repositioning of its sports betting product last year that aimed to cross-sell sportsbook users on Bally’s iGaming products.
There’s little doubt the company will do the same with Bally Bet Sportsbook NJ once it goes live for the first time in the Garden State.
“In both Ontario and New Jersey, we’ll introduce [online sports betting],” Reeves said during the call, “which will help us from an acquisition perspective to help gain extra revenue.
“And also, yeah, it will save on some marketing costs, but more importantly, it simplifies how our operational teams can work, as there’s one back office tool, there’ll be one set of tooling, where these people actually have a far better life, and we have a simpler solution to keep on scaling in a more cost-effective way.”
Bounceback coming for Bally’s after buyout?
Late last month, news emerged of Bally’s accepting a buyout offer from Standard General, the hedge fund of Bally’s chairman Soo Kim.
Within the announcement of that transaction was a statement from Reeves, who shed some light on how Bally’s would move forward strategically, noting that the company can “see a path toward additional revenue.”
No details were provided as to the effect the merger would have in New Jersey. However, a pair of Bally’s executives mentioned the group’s positioning among Atlantic City casinos.
Unfortunately, it was not uplifting news.
“Atlantic City had a somewhat difficult quarter as we were impacted by turnover in our relationship marketing team,” Bally’s President George Papanier said. “We were working aggressively to reestablish ourselves with those players and have introduced a new relationship team to drive incremental and new customer visitation. Unfortunately, the timing of this was particularly impactful as it came heading into Atlantic City’s peak season.”
Marcus Glover, chief financial officer for Bally’s, added that “we’re going through a little bit of property reinvention in terms of redefining our VIP relationships with the host staff.
“We lost some key folks on that team and repositioning the property a little bit and revitalizing those relationships.”
