New Jersey Spending Cuts: Bring on Legalized Sports Betting

With New Jersey Governor Chris Christie proposing deep spending cuts, the subject of legalized sports betting once more comes to the forefront. 

Christie unveiled a $29.3 billion budget on Tuesday that looks to prevent his state from going bankrupt.

The Governor broke one of his own campaign promises by suspending a popular property-tax rebate program until May 2011.  He also proposed laying off 1300 state workers and cutting $820 million in aid to public schools.

Could the cure be legalized sports betting?

A newly proposed law would allow Internet gambling by New Jersey residents, to be offered on Web sites through the state's casinos in Atlantic City. The bill was introduced into the New Jersey senate by Sen. Raymond J. Lesniak (D-Union), who also introduced a separate bill which calls for New Jersey residents to vote on a constitutional amendment that would permit state-regulated sports wagering in Atlantic City casinos, and to state residents via an intra-state Internet gambling system.

"We're happy that New Jersey has taken this issue into their own hands," said iMEGA chairman Joe Brennan Jr.  (pictured above) "New Jersey is recognized as having the toughest gaming regulators in the US, but as a leading gaming state with a long track record of doing things the right way, Internet gambling will have a great home here and the opportunity to begin normalizing the industry."

$10 Billion Per Year Could Be Raised

New Jersey wants to raise tax revenue by offering regulated sports wagering at its casinos and online to state residents. New Jersey may earn more than $100 million per year in taxes by regulating sports gaming, from an existing market which is estimated at more than $10 billion per year in the state.

But a number of Senators have been trying to block efforts by New Jersey and other states in recent months.

"We are writing to express our concern regarding the efforts in both Delaware and New Jersey to challenge Congress' consistent and long-held prohibitions on sports wagering," the senators wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder. "While the efforts in these two states vary, they both threaten to greatly expand sports gambling and undermine the integrity of our national pastimes. We urge the Department of Justice to defend and enforce the existing federal prohibition against sports betting and take the necessary action to safeguard amateur and professional sports."

Brennan, Jr. responded: "While I respect and share the senators' desire to uphold the integrity of the games we love, the fact is their way - opposing state regulated sports wagering - leaves an estimated $380 billion sports wagering market out there unprotected, with no oversight, and at the mercy of criminal elements that are far more able to try to affect the outcome of a game than if the state stepped in and took the business away from them."

"The senators and the leagues can make their pronouncements about "integrity", and then stick their heads in the sand," Brennan said, "because that's the only vantage point from which the current unregulated marketplace is preferable to a state-regulated sports wagering market."

New Jersey Faces Bankruptcy

Gov. Christie's has vowed that New Jersey must "live within its means".

As a percentage of the overall budget of $29.3 billion, New Jersey is facing the worst deficit in the nation. By comparison, Pennsylvania's projected deficit of about $500 million on a similar budget is a pittance., an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer reveals.

Figures cited by Brennan, Jr. are based on an online gambling industry that already caters to millions of US-based bettors.  The industry operates exclusively off US shores however while much of the money generated comes from US citizens who can still place their bets via the Web. 

"Billions of dollars are being bet offshore through the Internet or through organized crime, and those are revenues that could be going to New Jersey," Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) said.

"People are doing it," he said. "They're doing it every day. They're doing it for the NCAA tournament. They're doing it for the Super Bowl and professional football. But we can't regulate it and run it in the state of New Jersey, and that's just unfair."

Alejandro Botticelli, Gambling911.com