Borgata’s Online Gambling Turns Profit For Third Straight Quarter

Dustin Gouker, May 2, 2015 05:33 PDT

This article may be outdated. Get the latest news on New Jersey here.

Borgata’s online gambling offerings continued to build momentum in New Jersey, posting a third straight profitable quarter.

Boyd Gaming President and CEO Keith Smith delivered that news during a recent earnings call covering Q1 2015.

“Our online business continued to perform well, generating a profit for the third consecutive quarter,” Smith said in the call. “Borgata’s online gaming business contributed more than $4 million to the property’s EBITDA gain as last year’s $3 million loss swung to a profit of $1 million during the first quarter of this year.”

Borgata operates an online poker site and a casino site in partnership with bwin.party.

The actual numbers, year over year, were a profit of $1.1 million in Q1 2015, vs. losses of 3.2mm in Q1 2014, according to Boyd’s financials.

Settling into the market

Smith noted that the trend for Borgata’s online offerings appears to be the new norm. Last year’s Q1 was the launch of the online product, and “included significant start-up marketing cost that were not repeated this year.”

The trend has been positive pretty much ever since:

Online broke even in Q2 2014.
Borgata turned a profit for the first time in Q3 2014.
Q4 2014 continued the trend, with another profitable quarter.

No mention of PokerStars

The earnings call focused little on the online operation, even though the market seems likely to change for Borgata and the other online offerings in New Jersey later this year. That’s because of the pending entrance of PokerStars.

Over the past month, Resorts AC Morris Bailey said the licensing process for its New Jersey online partner, PokerStars, was wrapping up. Earlier, Amaya Gaming CEO David Baazov predicted a Q3 launch.

Unlike at least one past earnings call for Boyd, PokerStars was not mentioned. Last November, Smith said that Boyd “built the model to operate online gaming in New Jersey, we just assumed they (PokerStars) would be involved at some point in time.”

Read the full transcript at Seeking Alpha.

Dustin Gouker - Dustin Gouker has been a sports journalist for more than 15 years, working as a reporter, editor and designer -- including stops at The Washington Post and the D.C. Examiner. He has played poker recreationally for his entire adult life and has written about poker since 2008.

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