Casino Operators Say Online Gambling Won’t Hit Land Casinos

Keith Smith, the President and CEO of Boyd Gaming, had dismissed worries that the expansion of online gambling will lead to the downfall of land based casinos.

After examining the figures coming from Boyd’s New Jersey interests where online gambling was recently regulated, Smith believes that the market is large enough for both online and land based gambling without one having a negative effect on the other.
In a statement Smith said, “These results also once again demonstrate online gaming’s potential to expand our business. About 85 percent of our online players have not had rated play at Borgata in at least two years, showing there is little overlap with our land-based business. Online gaming is growing our database creating a long-term opportunity to market Borgata to an entirely new group of customers.”

Other casino operators in New Jersey have seen similar trends which shows that the overlap between online and land casino gamblers is fairly small.

A spokesman for Caesars Interactive also pointed out that studies carried out in the UK and Australia showed that there is no evidence that the growth of online gambling will damage land casinos.