Apparently, New Jersey is one of the states, affected by the crisis in the gambling industry, and all attempts of the authorities, made towards remedying the situation, were not quite sufficient.
To cut the long story short – four casinos have already filed for bankruptcy, a fifth one is to follow suit in the middle of December and the online gambling legislation didn’t bring the expected revenue.
The only positive thing is the intention of the new owners of the former casino venues to reopen them, which will hopefully stabilize the economy of the Garden State.
It is a well known fact that the current Governor – Chris Christie has been a key figure in the gambling affairs and experienced, to a great extent, all negative sides of being in charge of determining the fate of the sector.
Now, there is another challenge for Christie to overcome. Elections are approaching and Christie’s intention is to “stop the bleeding” and improve the situation with the Atlantic City-based casinos that turned out to be a pretty unprofitable investment due to the fact that Atlantic City is no longer the only major gambling hub of the East Coast.
Christie is about to be nominated for a President and his opponents will, by all means, put the blame for the Atlantic City’s issues on him. Although his guilt can not be denied, the truth is that he is not the only one to blame for the unstable economy and the closure of the casinos, which left hundreds of people unemployed.
Christie’s supporters didn’t miss to pinpoint the fact that the decline of Atlantic City hasn’t started during the time when Christie was chosen for a Governor.
For more than two centuries Nevada and New Jersey have been the states where online gambling activities were legal but now more and more states are trying to legalize them, which has an extremely negative impact on the economy of New Jersey in general.
While several years ago the annual revenue was more than $5 billion, now, it is several times smaller because of the tough competition of the neighbouring states. According to marketing experts, New Jersey still has chances to keep its economy stable provided that it succeeds in maintaining its monopoly.
Almost a week ago, Christie and Jon Hanson met representatives of the local gambling sector and discussed the toughest issues they have to deal with. On the next day, a report, containing recommendations for making the financial situation more bearable, was published. However, it was not mentioned what kind of actions have to be taken towards improving the online gambling and sports betting activities as both of them led to disappointing results as far as the revenue generated is concerned.
As a matter of fact, the changes, proposed by Hanson, sounded familiar to some people and they reminded the audience about a proposal that date back to 2010 when Christie entered the political battle. Although the suggested methods for improving the situation were pretty much the same, Christie has his supporters but the results from the elections will tell if they outnumber the opponents.
