Gov. Chris Christie Thinks 'New Jersey Is Going To Be Victorious Ultimately' In Sports Betting CaseState Filed Final Appeal In June, Looks To Join Nevada In Activity |
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In late June, the state of New Jersey made its final push toward offering full-fledged sports betting within its borders.
In 2011, state voters approved a referendum allowing the activity, and the state legislature later enacted a sports betting law. These moves were opposed by the major sports leagues — the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL), the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
Additionally, the Department of Justice challenged the Garden State.
The opposition came in the form of a lawsuit, and a federal judge ruled against New Jersey this spring. However, New Jersey filed a final appeal in June.
Fast forward to late August, and Gov. Chris Christie is confident about his chances.
“I think New Jersey is going to be victorious ultimately,” Christie said Monday on the “Boomer and Carton in the Morning” show in New York, according to The Washington Times. "There is no reason why Las Vegas, the state of Nevada, should have a monopoly on sports gambling.”
The leagues have argued that legalized sports betting in New Jersey could hurt the integrity of the games. Christie disagrees, citing an already operating black market.
“That is the folly of the leagues’ argument — that somehow if you legalize it, take it out of the hands of criminals, that somehow you are destabilizing the leagues," he said. "I mean, only the commissions of these leagues and the NCAA can make that argument with a straight face.”
Specifically, New Jersey is trying to overturn the the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which limited sports betting to four states — Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Delaware. Delaware has extremely limited sports betting, while both Montana and Oregon don’t actually have any commercial casinos offering the activity. Full-fledged sports betting is only happening in the Silver State, home to Las Vegas.
That law allowed states to be grandfathered into the activity, but New Jersey did not authorize sports betting at that time. It had a year to make a decision.
In some sense, right now, it’s trying to reverse its own mistake from two decades ago.
“The leagues have not, and cannot, prove that controlling sports gambling and regulating it — which is already taking place in New Jersey and throughout the United States illegally under cover of the black market — that regulation of that activity will somehow hurt the leagues,” lawyer Ted Olson, who is representing New Jersey, Gov. Christie and the state Division of Gaming Enforcement, said in a court hearing in late June, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They have not proven that. They cannot prove that.”
Earlier this year, New Jersey legalized online gambling. Sports betting on the Internet would be an immensely profitable activity if New Jersey could do it.
Sports betting in the United States is reportedly a $380-billion-a-year industry, the vast majority of which is done on the so-called “black market.”
Many of Nevada’s gaming companies also do business in the Garden State.
The reason why New Jersey lawmakers want sports betting? Its brick-and-mortar casino industry has been struggling for years. For the most recent news of the plunge, click here.
For more news from New Jersey, check out its state page.
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