The Daily Journal – By this time, New Jersey figured it would be raking in the bets on professional and college sports.
But with its bid to offer legal sports betting stalled and relying on a long-shot appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the only madness this March will bring to New Jersey is anger that things did not turn out quite the way it had hoped.
A handful of state legislators and Atlantic City’s mayor held a news conference Wednesday to tout the benefits of sports betting. But the only nine people who could really help them — the Supreme Court justices — were not in attendance, and not likely to be swayed by the arguments made in an Irish bar near the Atlantic City Boardwalk.
“The world bets on sports; it’s just a known fact,” Mayor Don Guardian said. “The fact that we can’t compete in that game is unfair.”
Senate President Steve Sweeney said the start of the NCAA college basketball championship tournament routinely packs Las Vegas casinos. By contrast, on a cold, gray March day in New Jersey, Atlantic City’s gambling halls were sparsely populated.
“Right now in Las Vegas, 97 percent of the rooms are booked, hundreds of thousands of people are in the city, spending millions of dollars,” he said.
But the effort to allow betting on pro and college sports depends on the high court accepting the case and ruling in favor of New Jersey — no sure thing. Sports betting is legal in only four states that met a 1991 deadline to approve it: Delaware, Montana, Nevada and Oregon. At the time, New Jersey was given the chance to become the fifth state but failed to act during a prescribed window.
