Philly.com – New Jersey Internet gambling regulators have eased the parameters used to determine that an online gambler is actually in the state, Brian Mattingley, chief executive of 888 Holdings P.L.C., said Friday.
“By allowing us a little bit more flexibility and easing the tolerance in that distance, it made it significantly better in the second and third month,” said Mattingley, whose London-based company has a partnership with Caesars Interactive in Atlantic City.
The issue is the buffer between the state line and a gambler’s location, which is determined using cellphone signals. To ensure that a gambler was on the Camden side of the Delaware River rather than the Philadelphia side, an undefined buffer was required in the system to block people too close to the border. The process is called geolocation.
“We have worked with the geolocation vendors and casinos to enhance the technology to make it more accurate and reliable, and to reduce false negatives,” said Kerry Langan, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.
New Jersey gambling revenue for February is scheduled for release Wednesday. In January, gamblers lost $9.5 million on the Internet.
Fitch Ratings said Friday that it expected Internet gambling revenue to increase throughout this year, approaching a total of $200 million for the operators. That would be an average of $17.3 million from February through December.
