The latest sportsbook to open in Atlantic City is a glamorous affair set up at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. The new venue kicked things off with a “pastry smash” Friday night with none other than NBA hall-of-fame center Shaquille O’Neal there as the featured guest.
The Moneyline Bar & Book cost $12 million to build and is a lavish place to spend a night or three betting up a storm. It is part sportsbook, part entertainment complex. There is a 40-foot LED video wall and nightly entertainment on tap. It features a 35-foot long bar with 24 beers on tap to go along with a full-service bar. And for the betting inclined, it includes six betting windows along with 19 slot machines in the room.
COO and President of Borgata Marcus Glover explained the reasoning behind such an extravagant place to spend an evening as they look to compete with the modern sports betting market.
“Many [casinos] get the majority of their sports-betting revenue by mobile wagering. We’re not there yet because we’re still getting traction on our mobile book out of our Borgata Sports and Play MGM platforms…At some point we will be in that [situation]. Rather than just building something that will go by the wayside, and putting so much energy around the transactional nature of betting, we said let’s integrate it fully with other aspects of entertainment.
And so that’s what you see today. Viewing, betting, dining and drinking make for a cool experience and so, it becomes a social atmosphere of coming into a lot of these things that you can’t do” in a standard sports book.
At the same time, for those traditional sports bettors, the Borgata also has you covered. New Jersey legalized sports betting over a year ago and to mark that occasion they opened their Race & Sports Book. That area of the casino will also remain open.
For the Moneyline Bar & Book, the party continued on Saturday, including autograph signing sessions with some sports heroes who plied their trade on some of the surrounding teams. That includes Hall-of-fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor from the New York Giants, along with RB Keith Byers and TE Brent Celek from the Philadelphia Eagles. Baseball lovers got to meet Hall-of-fame 3B Mike Schmidt from the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets legendary pitcher Dwight Gooden.
And if that wasn’t enough, Babe Ruth’s granddaughter Linda Ruth Tosetti was also there at the po-up sports art gallery that was set up at the new sportsbook.
Sounds like quite the party!