With Nevada being the leader of the pack when it comes to brick and mortar casinos, some worried that legalizing online gambling in the state would not generate substantial revenues because locals would rather venture to Las Vegas casinos instead of gaming remotely or from the comfort of their own homes. However, now that the latest online poker numbers are in (for May 2014), it is clear that online gambling is proving to be quite substantial.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board releases revenue data to the public on a monthly basis, and showed that in the month of May online poker contributed an impressive $862,000. While this is only a small portion of the over $970 million generated from live gambling curing the month of May, it was an increase of almost 9%.
Whether or not this spike will remain consistent is yet to be determined. This spike in online gambling is due to the World Series of Poker, which is held in Las Vegas during the month of May. WSOP.com invested substantially amount of revenue in cross-platform marketing pre and during the event in hopes of increasing interest, which resulted in the second highest grossing online poker numbers since online gambling was legalized.
What is important to take into consideration is that the majority of this monthly increase in revenue came from WSOP.com and not from their online competitors Ultimate Bet or Real Gaming. Not only that, WSOP saw a significant increase in new online gamblers, which has greater potential for an ongoing increase in revenues.
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