PokerStars Finds a Way Into New Jersey’s Online Gambling Market

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Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013 | Written by Shane Larson

PokerStars announced surprising news today when it revealed a deal with Atlantic City’s Resorts Casino to partner in pursuit of New Jersey’s soon-to-launch online gambling market.

“Resorts is a fantastic partner for us and we are looking forward to launch PokerStars in the U.S. in association with the other quality brands Resorts has brought to Atlantic City,” said Mark Scheinberg, CEO of PokerStars’ parent company The Rational Group.

Details of the deal were not released, but the outline is clear: Resorts qualifies to apply for an online gambling operator’s license in New Jersey, and PokerStars brings over a decade of unparalleled experience as the world’s leading online poker site.

PokerStars failed in earlier attempt to purchase an Atlantic City casino

PokerStars’ initial attempt to secure a place in the New Jersey online gambling market involved the proposed purchase of the Atlantic Club Casino.

As opposed to the new deal with Resorts, where PokerStars will be a partner to the casino, the approach with the ACC involved PokerStars taking over the entire casino and acting as an independent entity in New Jersey.

That deal fell apart in late April and remains mired in legal wrangling.

The Atlantic Club has yet to announced a proposed partnership for online gambling operations. Most analysts believe the casino could not undertake an online gambling initiative of their own accord.

Partnership still requires approval from NJ authorities

While players by and large reacted with elation to the news, the partnership announcement is just one step of the process for PokerStars to return to the United States.

New Jersey authorities – specifically the Division of Gaming Enforcement – must still give their seal of approval to the deal between Resorts and PokerStars.

It’s very difficult to handicap such things, but the general indicators seem to be positive for PokerStars. The court filings in their case against the ACC suggest that PokerStars was very confident of approval from the DGE for an Interim Casino Authorization, a far more advanced license than PokerStars will require to act as a partner of Resorts.

Just one of many relationships announced in last few days

The deal between PokerStars and Resorts is only one of a string of partnerships announced this week.

The rush of announcements was brought on by an end-of-June deadline from New Jersey gaming regulators for operators to submit their proposed partnerships for regulatory review.

In addition to PokerStars and Resorts, we’ve also seen reports that Tropicana has partnered with GameSys and that Trump Plaza has chosen Betfair.

Those reports come on top of announcements earlier in the week regarding the pairing of Ultimate Gaming and Trump Taj Mahal.

And a number of partnerships had already been made public well in advance of the deadline. Boyd Gaming, co-owner of the Borgata, has an alliance with bwin.party, and Caesars has a long-standing cooperation with 888.

The steps ahead for New Jersey online gambling

The next milestone in the process for online gambling in New Jersey is for regulators to review these partnerships and give their approval (or rejection).

Following that, we’ll see a series of technical tests for proposed software and likely some revisions to the official regulations for online gambling. Once those hurdles are cleared, it will be a straight shot to the launch of regulated online gambling in New Jersey, currently scheduled for late November 2013.

New Jersey will then join Nevada – and likely Delaware – as one of the few states offering clearly regulated, legal online poker in the United States.