The figures from 2024 and the first two months of 2025 show that Atlantic City revenue is down based on previous years. Unsurprisingly, this has coincided with a substantial growth in online casino revenue.
The 2024 Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) numbers from all nine Atlantic City casinos show a 1.1% decrease against 2023. In contrast, 2025 got off to a good start, with GRR up 3% in January 2025 compared to the previous year. However, this crashed back down in February 2025, which saw figures down 3.8% from 2024.
Here are the key facts that show how Atlantic City’s casino revenue has dipped over the past year while online casino revenue has grown:
Combined, the nine remaining brick-and-mortar casinos in Atlantic City pulled in 1.1% less from their patrons in 2024 than they did in 2023. These are estimated figures at the moment, as the final numbers for the fourth quarter of 2024 haven’t yet been released.
Still, it doesn’t look great for the once-thriving New Jersey coastal town.
As we explained above, January 2025 saw a yearly increase of 3%, but that was then offset by a 3.8% year-on-year slump in February.
Despite January’s year-on-year growth, Atlantic City casinos’ GRR was behind iGaming in the first two months of 2025.
Atlantic City casinos racked up a total GRR of $203.4 million in February 2025, which shows a year-over-year decrease on two fronts, as you can see from the figures below:
| Casino activity | Total won by casinos (February 2025) | Year-over-year decrease (percentage) |
|---|---|---|
| In-person slots: | $152.1 million | -4.3% |
| Other in-person casino activities: | $51.3 million | -2.5% |
While Atlantic City casinos’ numbers are down in nearly every conceivable way, online casinos are on the up. The total iGaming GRR for February 2025, including online slots, table games, and poker, was $207.8 million.
As well as being $4.4 million better off than Atlantic City’s in-person casinos, this also marked a 14% increase based on the previous year.
If nothing else, these numbers prove that the appetite for casino gambling is not diminishing – on the contrary, the market is increasing. While it’s clear that fewer players are visiting brick-and-mortar casinos, like those in Atlantic City; and more players are turning to online alternatives.
Contextualizing the figures, Jane Bokunewicz, the director of Stockton University’s Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming, Hospitality and Tourism, said, “A less busy month for in-person patrons opened the door to more internet gaming activity”.
She then went on to explain that this provided “the opportunity for online casino operations to pass brick-and-mortar for a second consecutive month with a 14% increase over February 2024”.
It’s not just online casinos that are dominating their brick-and-mortar counterparts, online betting is now miles ahead of retail sportsbooks in NJ. Of the total $988.9 million wagered in February 2025, just $39.3 million was from in-person bets, with the rest being wagered online.
The sportsbooks won $73.6 million of the total amount wagered, equating to a 9% increase based on the previous year.
Online iGaming and sports betting in New Jersey in February 2025 totalled $484.8 million, a 5% year-over-year increase.
While these figures show that the popularity of in-person gambling in Atlantic City might be on the decline, things have gotten better overall since the COVID-19 pandemic.
For February at least, the New Jersey winter weather may have accounted for the in-person numbers being down, so there’s hope yet for a strong Spring and a solid summer.
