New Jersey and Nevada Ready to Cooperate on Online Poker?

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Thursday, August 8th, 2013 | Written by Charles Washington

Industry observers have long contended that an online gambling compact between Nevada and New Jersey was unlikely, due to the inherent competition between the United State’s twin gambling capitals.

But now one prominent member of the gambling industry is publicly suggesting that the reverse may in fact be the case.

That individual: Jim Murren, CEO of MGM Resorts International, who recently told Reuters that he sees the chances of New Jersey and Nevada coming together on the issue of online gambling within the next year as “likely.”

Murren finds plenty of room for online gambling optimism

“I think it’s likely that in 2014 we’ll see a compact between New Jersey and Nevada,” was Murren’s specific comment on the situation. Murren also mentioned that his team has been working closely with Nevada to advance efforts related to interstate online gambling compacts.

The payoff for those efforts, Murren believes, will be a more sustainable, farther-reaching U.S. online poker market. Murren says he believes a majority of states – “at least 40” – are considering online gambling to various degrees.

Overlap between New Jersey and Nevada

One of the facts no doubt driving Murren’s optimism about a deal between New Jersey and Nevada is the intense amount of overlap between the gambling industry in New Jersey and Nevada’s parallel roster.

Obviously Caesars’ is a substantial player in both markets. You also have Ultimate Gaming – the first room to launch in Nevada – in a partnership with New Jersey’s Trump Taj Mahal. 888 is heavily involved in the fledgling online gambling market in both Nevada and New Jersey. And, of course, Murren’s company – MGM – operates casinos in Nevada and is a co-owner of the successful Borgata resort and casino in Atlantic City.

With that much overlap, it’s clear that there will be no shortage of pressure on both sides from the industry for the two states to come together. Whether or not that pressure will be enough to get officials from New Jersey and Nevada on the same page is obviously a separate question, but it’s a far more relevant question due to the interest such powerful commercial forces have in seeing the matter advanced.

Compact could be for poker only

As of the writing of this article, Nevada permits only one product – poker – to be offered online for real money. New Jersey, on the other hand, is set to allow just about any form of gambling you can find in a casino (including poker) to be offered online.

The resolution of that asymmetry will almost certainly be that a compact between the two states would be for poker only, and not for any other casino games – at least not until Nevada updates their approach to online gambling to include games other than poker.

Either way, a compact between the two states for poker would still represent a fairly dramatic expansion of the player pool for both New Jersey and Nevada. With a population of over 2 million, Nevada would boost the raw size of New Jersey’s market by almost 25%. And with the amount of tourists who flood Nevada each year – especially for poker-related events like the World Series of Poker – you could easily argue that Nevada probably punches well above its rate in terms of the percentage of the population that is interested in playing poker online for real money.

While that would still leave the combined market far short of a California or European online poker market, it would nonetheless represent a strong, vibrant market capable of supporting a number of sites, game types and stakes – exactly what American online poker players are missing in the status quo.