ATLANTIC CITY (CelebrityAccess) — New Jersey has revealed that they are considering abolishing the Atlantic City Alliance, a marketing partnership designed to boost the city's casino industry through staging large, free public events.
Ending the marketing alliance would free up $30 million, which would be used instead to help the city's finances or to fund a development agency to foster growth. The alliance is funded primarily from the casinos with money that had initially been intended as payments to the state's racetracks to keep them free of slot machines.
"Individual casinos have done promotion and held beach concerts in the past, and they'll continue to do so in the future," Sen. James Whelan told The Associated Press. "But things have changed now. We're in an emergency situation, and there are more urgent needs for the money the alliance had been using could be put to better uses, even if it means no one is promoting the resort as a whole."
The alliance, formed in 2011, was best known for its "Do AC" tourism slogan, and for staging free beach concerts with artists such as Blake Shelton and Lady Antebellum, generating what the Alliance claimed was more than 23 million in spending in the resort city.
However, a commission empaneled by NJ governor Christie studying ways to help save Atlantic City, said that the alliance was not driving meaningful increases in visitation and spending. Still, the decision to end the alliance was driven by the casinos themselves.
State Senate president Steven Sweeney told the Associated Press that "[The Casinos] were going to continue to market. They felt when they voted to eliminate it, and we agreed, that those dollars right now are very important to stabilizing the situation in Atlantic City." – Staff Writers
