New Jersey’s casinos, racetracks that take sports bets and their online partners won over $423 million in October, up 6.6% from a year earlier, according to figures released Friday by state gambling regulators.

But the casinos’ key metric – the amount of money won from in-person gamblers – continued to trail pre-pandemic levels at five of the nine casinos, an ongoing concern for Atlantic City’s gambling industry.

Only four casinos – Ocean, Borgata, Hard Rock and Resorts – won more last month from in-person gamblers than they did in October 2019, before the COVID19 pandemic broke out.

“Despite anecdotal observations suggesting a decline in on-property activity, the numbers for brick-and-mortar activity for 2023 year-to-date are favorable,” said Jane Bokunewicz, director of the Lloyd Levenson Institute at Stockton University, which studies the Atlantic City gambling market.

She noted that with $2.4 billion revenue from in-person gamblers through the first 10 months this year, those numbers are on track to surpass those from all of 2019, and have a chance of surpassing 2022 levels as well.

The casinos must share internet and sports betting money with third parties, including sports books and technology partners; it is not solely for the casinos to keep. That is why the casinos focus most on money from in-person gamblers.