New Jersey Moves Ahead on Online Gambling

0 Comments   Email   Print

New Jersey is home to Atlantic City, easily the second most popular land casino destination in The United States after Las Vegas. However if things go on track it could well be the first state to legalize online gambling. The good news for online players is that New Jersey has specifically included online casino gambling in its proposals. In many other places online gambling proposals include only online poker or online sports betting.

State Senator Ray Lesniak had introduced his bills in January 2010. They are moving much faster than the federal bills on the legalization of online gambling, which are floundering for quite some time now. Senator Lesniak has proposed that land casinos that have been granted licensed in New Jersey would be allowed to offer online casino gambling to New Jersey residents. Atlantic City Weekly reported on a public hearing on the Lesniak Act. The report said that online gaming officials favored Atlantic City as the licensing jurisdiction because a stringent regulatory environment was already in place there to monitor the land casinos. This would help in communicating that online wagering is regulated and is safe. The proposal is that the intra-state online gambling would be regulated through a to-be established Division of Internet Wagering under the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. Since the Commission is located in Atlantic City and the land casinos are located in Atlantic City, it would make sense to establish the Division of Internet Wagering there as well.

New Jersey lobbyists participated at the Global iGaming Summit & Expo. One of the lobbyists said, "The thrust of the bill is to unite the brick and mortar existing licensees with online gaming interests; to join them together so they can complement each other. We're going to be the first state in the nation to have this bill passed. I'm confident in that."

In what can only be termed surprising, the biggest opposition to the online gambling bill of New Jersey is coming from Harrah's. This is surprising because Harrah's is one of the biggest proponents of land casinos going online. Harrah's Interactive CEO spelt this out in no uncertain terms at the Global iGaming Summit & Expo. iMEGA Chairman Joe Brennan, Jr. explained, "Harrah's has said that they prefer a federal solution and they have gone all in on the federal solution." He added, "Well, we at iMEGA believe that we can walk and chew gum at the same time." He meant that iMEGA would be supporting legislation legalizing online gambling at both the level of the states and the federal level.

News Item Tools

 Email     Print     Digg     Del.icio.us    StumbleUpon

Comments

 Add Comment

Add Comment

More News