SECAUCUS, New Jersey – Governor Phil Murphy wasn’t in office when New Jersey’s fight to overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act began in 2012 under the auspices of former Governor – and new Sports Betting Hall of Fame member – Chris Christie.
On Tuesday, Murphy said he is “proud to be the Murphy in Murphy v. NCAA” Supreme Court ruling last May that tossed out PASPA and to have signed the legislation legalizing sports betting in New Jersey a month later.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy address the Betting on Sports America conference.
“Then I made the trek to Monmouth Park to place the first legal bets in this state on June 14th,” Murphy said during his keynote address before a capacity audience at the Betting on Sports America conference at the Meadowlands Exposition Center.
“I may regret those first bets,” he said. His wagers were on Germany to win soccer’s World Cup, reflecting his past as the US Ambassador to Germany, and on the New Jersey Devils to win the Stanley Cup.
“But I don’t regret for one second the leadership that New Jersey provided during the legal challenge, nor the leadership we are providing today in the growth of the U.S. legal sports betting industry,” he said.
Murphy was clear and decisive not only about his pride in helping to legalize sports betting in the state, but about his intent to see New Jersey continue to lead the way in the field, and to be both the “intellectual and technical capital of online sports wagering in the United States.”
In just the 10 months since he placed that first wager, the state has seen more than $2 billion worth of wagers, and new life has been pumped into the New Jersey’s racetracks and casinos. The legalization of online wagering, and the development of the platform to handle those bets, has seen nearly 75 percent of the state’s wagers placed online.
New Jersey is currently the second-largest sports wagering market in the country, and the largest, Nevada, is in the state’s sights; according to experts. Murphy said New Jersey can “overtake it and its decades-long head start” as early as 2020. It’s worth noting, however, that New York doesn’t yet offer legal sports betting.
He dismissed any notion of the state’s fight for legalization as a “cash grab,” saying that the state has realized approximately $1.5 million in new tax revenues per month since the law was passed. Weighed against a $38 billion state budget, he said that, though welcome, the new revenues were a “drop in the proverbial bucket.”
“We are in the early days of what’s expected to be a multi-billion-dollar market, and that’s just the operators’ (profits) from hundreds of millions of dollars of bets,” Murphy said. “We brought what was an underground, illegal industry into the light, where it can create and protect jobs in our racetracks, casinos, and tech sector.”
The state is gunning to turn itself into a hub of sports betting development and innovation. Murphy cited the state’s history of innovation, calling it “Silicon Valley before there was a Silicon Valley,” and said the state’s placement on the map, at roughly the midpoint of the Atlantic Corridor, its population density, and its existing crop of tech talent, which he said was larger than those of Chicago, Austin and Nashville “combined,” allow it to offer fertile ground for gaming companies to develop new product.
Murphy said that the state has proposed several new incentive programs with an eye toward “partnering” with business to not only foster growth and create jobs, but to “help become a true part of a broader New Jersey family.”
He lauded the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement, saying that it is “as good as it gets… in the world” and that, more than just a regulatory agency, the Division functions as a proactive partner to the gaming industry, creating an environment that allows companies to bring new products to market more quickly. The NJ First program, for example, provides a 14-day approval guarantee of compliant new products, and New Jersey has the only in-house tech testing lab in the United States.
“We’re going to leverage our built-in advantages to dominate the marketplace,” he said. “New Jersey is the place you want to be.”
