Atlantic City’s 2025 Tourism Win Left a Thinner Resort

Atlantic City casinos posted $1.73 billion in summer 2025 gaming revenue, up 15.4 percent year over year. Stockton University’s Jersey Shoreview panel on Oct. 9, 2025, still called it a strong season for the Boardwalk.

The same briefing put average casino jobs at 23,353, down 2.9 percent. A year later the physical resort is thinner: online play has passed the casino floor, operating profit is down, and hotel-casino employment in April 2026 was 21,172, below the April 2021 pandemic trough.

Stockton’s 2025 Panel Called Summer a Rebound

LIGHT Faculty Director Jane Bokunewicz opened the sixth annual Jersey Shoreview panel with those gaming figures plus brick-and-mortar win of $855 million, up 5.5 percent. Vehicles through the Atlantic City Expressway’s Pleasantville Toll Plaza reached 5.53 million, up 0.6 percent from 2024.

Meetings looked like the other win. Bokunewicz cited 15 shows, a 150 percent increase over 2024, and $17.7 million in delegate spending, up 41 percent. Mary Moliver, then executive director of destination services at Visit Atlantic City, said the convention center was full after a weak June.

Ben Rose, director of marketing and media relations for the Greater Wildwood Tourism Authority, was more careful. June had been wet, he said, and the shore was still waiting on tax prints, but July, August, and a second season in September looked strong enough to meet or beat 2024.

Feras Shawi, owner of Brewberry Café in Atlantic City, saw more families on the sidewalk. He also saw smaller tickets. After tariffs, he said, he raised prices and ran more promotions, and guests who used to buy two or three items bought one.

A 16-Day Window and a 2.7-Day Stay

Rose described a visitor who booked late and left early. Cooke, Stockton’s economist and editor of the South Jersey Economic Review, tied that habit to a softer national job market, tariffs, and people who no longer knew what their next quarter would look like.

HOW THE 2025 SUMMER THINNED OUT

• The booking window: Rose said the average reservation was being made about 16 days before arrival, far shorter than the old months-ahead pattern.
• Length of stay: The average visit in Wildwood had shortened to 2.7 days, which he called a major change from earlier seasons.
• Canadian visitors: Cape May County, which leans on that market, saw about a 60 percent drop; Wildwood shifted marketing toward Latino families.
• Casino payrolls: Summer casino employment averaged 23,353, down 2.9 percent, even as the gaming print rose.

Bokunewicz would not pick a cause for the job drop. “It’s unclear if that’s because of economic efficiency or because of the difficulty in finding employees for the industry,” she said.

Air shows did the work operators wanted from a longer calendar. Moliver said Atlantic City’s civilian show drew more than 150,000 people on a Tuesday and Wednesday and put $19 million into the city, with 2026 dates shifting from July to May. Rose said Wildwood’s September show drew close to 150,000 people over two days, generated more than $36 million in business, and filled most of more than 8,000 hotel rooms. Those weekends padded a season that was already running on shorter stays.

Online Play Passed the Casino Floor

The summer print that looked like a rebound sat on top of a full-year split. LIGHT’s 2025 casino industry impact report, written with the Casino Association of New Jersey, found total net revenue of $3.29 billion, essentially level with $3.31 billion in 2024. Net gaming revenue was $1.67 billion, up 0.8 percent. Lodging net revenue fell 4.1 percent and food and beverage fell 3.1 percent; entertainment and other net revenue rose 38.7 percent and pushed non-gaming to $1.74 billion, more than half of net revenue.

Gross operating profit told the cost story. The nine casinos finished 2025 at $681.6 million, down 3.9 percent from $709.2 million in 2024 and 16.3 percent below the recent peak of $814.2 million in 2022, the third straight yearly decline. Visitors, using Pleasantville toll counts as a proxy, were about 17.6 million, down 2.6 percent from 2024.

Taxes still climbed. Total casino taxes and fees reached $1.1 billion, up 24.8 percent from $883.2 million in 2024, because internet gaming and mobile sports betting carry heavier rates than the floor. Internet gaming generated $2.91 billion, 45.0 percent of gross gaming revenue, and for the first time passed slots, tables, and poker combined at about $2.89 billion.

THE 2025 GROSS GAMING MIX

That mix is why Trenton can book a record tax year while Atlantic County’s physical payroll shrinks. An online platform does not staff dealers, housekeepers, cooks, and hotel crews the way a Boardwalk property does. LIGHT counted more than 22,500 employees for 2025, including 14,500 Atlantic County residents and 4,600 Atlantic City residents, a third of the city’s labor force, and $634 million in purchases from New Jersey vendors.

What August Did to the 2025 Pace

The 2026 summer did not restore the old floor. The Division of Gaming Enforcement, in its Sept. 16 release, said the nine casino hotels won $294.9 million in August, down 5.5 percent from $311.9 million a year earlier. Internet gaming won $259.3 million, up 4.4 percent, and was the only major channel up for the month. Sports wagering fell 25.0 percent to $61.4 million; the division pointed to a later start for college football and a lower win percentage. Combined gaming revenue was $615.7 million, down 4.1 percent from $642.2 million.

AUGUST 2026 GAMING REVENUE

Year to date through August, the state still ran ahead because of the internet book: $4.81 billion in total gaming revenue, up 5.4 percent from $4.57 billion, with $674.2 million in gross revenue taxes. Casino-hotel win of $2.01 billion was up only 1.8 percent. July had looked better on the floor, with casino win of $304.2 million, up 7.1 percent, and total gaming of $678.1 million, up 11.9 percent. August gave that back.

Profit is the clearer 2026 tell. Licensee filings for the second quarter showed net revenue of $844.5 million, up 0.9 percent, while gross operating profit fell 15.5 percent for the first half, to $269.6 million, after a 10.1 percent drop in the second quarter alone to $164.9 million. First-half net revenue was $1.57 billion, up 0.2 percent. Stockton’s own preview for the Oct. 8, 2026, Shoreview already puts the year as revenues up and profits down.

A Nine-Year Low in Casino-Hotel Jobs

The Atlantic County Economic Alliance’s employment study, prepared by Dr. Max Slusher and released July 20, 2026, with comments from Cooke and LIGHT, put the labor math in one pair of readings. Direct 21,172 casino-hotel jobs in April 2026 was the lowest point in a nine-year ZIP-code panel, 312 below the April 2021 trough of 21,484.

The money is still flowing to Trenton. The same level of work is not flowing to Atlantic City households.

Greater Atlantic City Casino-Hotel Employment Exposure Assessment, Atlantic County Economic Alliance

The study’s central case places 5,105 Atlantic County jobs at risk of exposure by 2035 from online substitution, New York City casinos, and a recession overlay, without any new North Jersey casino-hotels. Holding gaming spend constant, it found that moving $1 million of demand from a bricks-and-mortar casino-hotel to the online channel supports 30.6 percent fewer direct-plus-supplier jobs in the county, 3.66 full-time-equivalent jobs instead of 5.28.

Of those 21,172 jobs, 69.5 percent sat in five Atlantic County towns, with 4,638 in Atlantic City and 2,420 in Pleasantville. Shore towns have already taken the long decline from their own peaks: Brigantine down 44.6 percent, Margate 38.3 percent, Ventnor 29.7 percent. Resorts World New York City opened live table games on April 28, 2026, the first full-scale casino floor in the city, with two more New York licenses still ahead.

UNITE HERE Local 54 closed a round of new deals with all nine Atlantic City properties in August, including Bally’s. Every contract runs one year. The prior round, in 2022, followed the usual three-year-or-longer pattern. Short paper is how a union prices a market that does not know what the next New York floor, or a Meadowlands question on a ballot, will do to the Boardwalk.

The metro jobless rate is not the same story Cooke told in 2025, when he put the region closer to 7 percent and the state around 5 percent. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics had the Atlantic City-Hammonton rate at 5.4 percent in July 2026. Leisure and hospitality payrolls fell 7.5 percent from July 2025, to 61,300, while total nonfarm employment was down 3.9 percent. The unemployment rate eased. The hospitality roster did not.

Jim Kennedy, an Atlantic City regional economic analyst, wrote in mid-September that New York’s new casino floors imply thousands of leisure and hospitality losses over three years, and that the shore has no recent stretch in which it created a matching block of non-casino jobs. A casino that runs like a year-round resort, with rooms, shows, and food as the product rather than a hotel bolted onto a gambling hall, is still the model that hires those workers. The online tax engine does not.

Sheraton Owners Set a Dec. 15 Shutdown Date

The 2025 meetings rebound now has a building problem. LINY Investor LLC, the owner of the Sheraton Atlantic City Convention Center Hotel, has said the 502-room property attached to the convention center could close Dec. 15 unless New Jersey awards Aspire tax credits for a roughly $100 million project that would turn 130 rooms into senior apartments and modernize 252 remaining rooms. Marriott, which operates the hotel under a lease, has filed WARN notices covering 99 jobs effective Oct. 1 and 91 jobs effective Dec. 25.

The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority approved the land-use piece in March. Atlantic City Council passed local tax-break ordinances. The credits still sit with the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. Mayor Marty Small Sr. has said the city cannot afford to lose the rooms. CRDA board member Frank Formica has asked for a state-backed rescue mandate for the agency.

If this closes, we’re done as far as conventions are concerned.

Frank Formica, Casino Reinvestment Development Authority board member

On Sept. 24, Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson told Gov. Mikie Sherrill the convention center and the hotel need state help, not a new meetings hall in the Meadowlands that would compete for the same business. The 2025 panel’s 15-show summer is the inventory that hall was built to hold.

FROM THE 2025 SHOWS TO THE 2026 HOTEL THREAT

1. Oct. 9, 2025: Stockton’s Jersey Shoreview panel reports 15 convention shows and $17.7 million in delegate spending for the summer.
2. March 2026: CRDA approves land use for the Sheraton’s partial conversion to senior apartments.
3. April 2026: Casino-hotel employment is 21,172; Resorts World New York City opens table games on April 28.
4. July 20, 2026: The Atlantic County Economic Alliance publishes the employment exposure study.
5. Sept. 16, 2026: DGE posts the August gaming miss; Sheraton ownership warns of a Dec. 15 close.
6. Oct. 1, 2026: A WARN notice covering 99 Sheraton jobs takes effect.
7. Dec. 15, 2026: The owner’s stated shutdown date if Aspire credits do not arrive.

Lose the connected hotel and the 2025 meetings print becomes harder to repeat, which is the local channel the ACEA study treats as the main place to absorb casino-hotel workers already in exposure.

Cooke Returns on Oct. 8 to a Split Market

The seventh annual Jersey Shoreview is set for 9 a.m. on Oct. 8 at Stockton Atlantic City, 3711 Atlantic Avenue, with a Zoom stream. Visit Atlantic City is co-hosting. Gary Musich, the destination’s president and chief executive, is billed for a special presentation on events in a resort town. Scott Cronick moderates. Cooke is back on the panel, with Michael Chait of the CRDA, Jim McDonald of Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall and the Atlantic City Convention Center, and Anthony Molino of Visit Atlantic City.

Cooke’s 2025 warning was inflation “slowly building” and a regional jobless rate a couple of points above the state’s. The metro rate has since come in. Hospitality payrolls, casino-hotel headcount, one-year union paper, and a convention hotel on a WARN clock are the 2026 version of that warning. Capital spending in 2025 was $195 million, part of more than $1 billion over five years, which is the operators’ bet that the destination can still outrun a New York floor.

The Oct. 8 briefing will look back at a summer in which statewide gaming dollars kept climbing on the internet ledger while the Boardwalk’s own profit and payroll did not. That is the same split Bokunewicz put on the table in 2025, only louder.