New Jersey’s Fight for
Online Gambling
February
25, 2010
There is a federal law that was passed in 1992 that makes all sports
betting illegal, except in the states of Nevada, Delaware, Montana and
Oregon. This law states that no online gambling or land based gambling
on sports is permitted – and is called the Professional and Amateur
Sports Protection Act of 1992 or PASPA. When it was passed the sports
betting industry was less than $300 billion a year. Still a lot of money
however you look at it, but today – with that law in place – the sports
betting industry is in excess of $500 billion a year.
The problem is that this is such a huge amount of money that there are
states like New Jersey that think that sports betting should be
legalized as they know that they are missing out on more than $100
million a year in revenues. They want to add it to their proposed online
gambling line up so that people can play at the online gambling sites as
well as the sports books.
They say that they might be illegal in the state to participate in
sports betting but right now there are back alley deals, organized crime
rings and offshore online gambling site that are making huge amounts of
profit off of something that they should be able to get their part of.
The state argues that this could easily be a way for the state and its
racetracks to bring in more money, for as of right now they are being
penalized for not offering it and those illegal online gambling and back
room dealers are being rewarded in the billions for not following the
law.
There are many within the state that are upset that Congress has decided
for them whether or not they can allow this form of online gambling and
they are pushing to have the law overturned. We will see how it goes.
