No Postseason Necessary: NJ Pushes To Revise Amendment, Allow Betting On All NCAA Games

If you’re currently a sports bettor in New Jersey, wagering on collegiate sports may seem randomly limited (although still possible). This is due to the college sports betting restriction by a state amendment which bans the ability of wagering on college games played in New Jersey or involving New Jersey teams playing anywhere.

[AUGUSTA]

Following the original bill proposed last month, the state would simply amend to allow betting on New Jersey college playoff and Bowl games. But reported by Wayne Parry at the Associated Press, “the new measure would allow it on regular season games as well…it is aimed primarily at events like the NCAA basketball championship tournament, which was last held in New Jersey at Newark’s Prudential Center in 2011. The arena will host one of the tournament’s regional competitions in 2025.”

According to New Jersey state law:

“Prohibited Events
N.J.S.A. 5:12A-10: “prohibited sports event” means any collegiate sport or athletic event that takes place in New Jersey or a sport or athletic event in which any New Jersey college team participates regardless of where the event takes place. A “prohibited sports event” does not include the other games of a collegiate sport or athletic tournament in which a New Jersey college team participates, nor does it include any games of a collegiate tournament that occurs outside New Jersey even though some of the individual games or events are held in New Jersey. A prohibited sports event includes all high school sports events, electronic sports, and competitive video games but does not include international sports events in which persons under age 18 make up a minority of the participants.”

But it’s in fact the Senate Budget Committee who approved the new measure, which serves as the official introduction of the bill’s inclusion on next year’s state general election.

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By all verbal accounts from NCAA teams all the way up to the Attorney General, the bill’s initial proposal was met with a somewhat surprising embrace. This would likely be presumed by the positive impact which gambling revenue has done for the state economy.

Per Wayne Parry, “New Jersey’s fast-growing sports betting market blew past its own national record in September, taking in more than $748 million in bets from sports gamblers finally able to wager on football amid the coronavirus outbreak…Over the first nine months of this year, New Jersey casinos and tracks have taken in nearly $3.3 billion in sports bets alone. That equals or surpasses what Atlantic City used to make in an entire year from casino gambling before sports betting was legalized.”

With the new bill being revised for November 2021’s general election, a year’s worth of added examples of benefit leading up to the voting process of the bill should only bode as momentous in passing the sweeping revisal of the old amendment. While things appear to gradually be on the up-and-up for legal sports betting across numerous states since the early 2018 Supreme Court decision to legalize it federally, states such as Texas, Kentucky, and Ohio have much bleaker outlooks in the legal wagering world.

2021 marks what’s to be a very decisive year for sports gambling in the United States, with 15 different states looking to make legislative strides in passing measures for legal sports betting (while not all will include mobile betting…**boo**).

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