Posts Tagged ‘Governor Chris Christie’

New Jersey Online Poker brings Pro Sports into the Mix

Thursday, January 9th, 2014

Aside from a few scandals (see 1919 Chicago White Sox), there has always been a clear separation between American professional sports teams and gambling. Sure people love to gamble on sports in the United States. But as for a pro sports team aligning itself with a gambling entity, well, that’s usually been a clear no-no over legality/fear issues.

However, the unthinkable has happened after the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils signed a deal with bwin.party digital entertainment. Not surprisingly, these are the first two US sports teams to ink such a deal with an online gambling company.

As many poker players know, bwin.party runs the Party Poker site in the legalized and regulated New Jersey online gaming market. Seeing as how the New Jersey-based Party Poker has nothing to do with sports betting, neither the NBA nor NHL have a problem with this deal. So for the first time ever, we may see US professional sports teams promoting gambling sponsors on their uniforms and/or team merchandise.

As for the New Jersey online poker operation, business has been pretty good so far. Nearly 150,000 accounts have already been created, which is quite impressive when you consider that the Garden State has a population of roughly 8.6 million people.

Most Wall Street analysts believe that New Jersey internet poker will generate between $200 million and $300 million in its first year. This is far below the over-inflated predictions made by Governor Chris Christie, who said that he expected $1 billion in revenue by the summer. But it’s definitely a nice piece of the internet poker pie.

Given that New Jersey now has professional sports teams that’ll be advertising for them, their number of players only figures to boost revenue figures even more.

New Jersey legalizes Online Gambling

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

Online gambling took another big step in the United States after New Jersey legalized online poker and casino games. Governor Chris Christie signed the bill into effect today, making New Jersey just the third state behind Delaware and Nevada to legalize internet gambling.

After vetoing previous gaming bills in 2011 and early 2013, Christie finally approved the legislation this time around. The big reason why was that this bill made certain amendments to Christie’s liking such as raising funds for gambling addiction programs from $150,000 to $250,000, and increasing taxes on online gaming revenues from 10% to 15%.

Another major reason why Christie eventually passed this online gaming bill was because of New Jersey State Senator Ray Lesniak. After being rejected last month, Lesniak reworked the bill and got it back on Governor Christie’s desk. He stated:

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. It’s been an unnecessarily long road, but we finally got there. It’s a relief. I didn’t want to have to go through this a third time, but I’ll tell you I was prepared to. The governor knew I wasn’t going away, and unfortunately neither were the problems of Atlantic City.

From the get go, the governor has been on the wrong side of what is necessary to save jobs in Atlantic City and grow the gaming industry there and in the state. It was a real struggle to get him to change his viewpoint, but thankfully he did. Better late than never.

Helping revive Atlantic City was a big selling point in getting this bill passed. Atlantic City has seen its casino revenue decline from a peak of $5 billion in 2006 to $3 billion in 2012. Now the city’s casinos will be able to offer online poker and casino games to both state residents and visitors.

This certainly works out in PokerStars’ favor, which purchased the Atlantic Club Casino just weeks ago in anticipation of legalized New Jersey online gambling. Now it’s looking more and more likely that Stars will be able to gain a foothold in the US online poker scene again.