The New Jersey State Assembly passed a bill which would legalize and regulate daily fantasy sports last week by a vote of 56 to 16 (six did not vote and two abstained, which sounds the same but is actually different). A3532 is sponsored by Assemblymen Vincent Mazzeo, Ralph Caputo, Paul Moriarty, and John J. Burzichelli and has now moved on to the Senate.
The bill is relatively straight-forward, containing the same rules and requiring the same protections as have been written into laws governing daily fantasy in other states.
The bill’s sponsors see daily fantasy as something totally different than gambling, arguing that “fantasy sports activities are contests in which the relative skill of the participants predominates to a degree that chance plays no material role in determining the outcome of the activities.”
They also cite the passage of DFS bills in other states as support for their “DFS is not equal to gambling” stance. Aside from the skill versus chance discussion, the bill’s sponsors also want to protect both New Jersey DFS consumers and operators with proper regulations and thus believe that it is high time to legalize DFS in the Garden State.
This all comes at a time when New Jersey is in a battle to get sports betting legalized. According to the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA), betting on sporting events – that is, the outcomes of the actual games – is illegal in all but four states: Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Delaware. At the time the bill was passed, states that had had legal sports betting for the previous ten years were given the option to exempt themselves from PASPA. For whatever reason, New Jersey did not and thus the long-time center of east coast gambling has been without sports betting.
New Jersey has taken its fight all the way to the Supreme Court; the state argues that PASPA unconstitutionally violates the state’s right to choose how it handles gambling.
In the meantime, two New Jersey members of U.S. House of Representatives have introduced bills that would allow their state to launch a sports betting industry. Rep. Frank LoBiondo introduced H.R. 783, which would give states another opportunity to opt-in to sports betting via a four year period during which they could reconsider their previous decision to turn down sports betting.
Rep. Frank Pallone penned H.R. 784, which straight-up just exempts New Jersey from the PASPA law. Should that pass, the legal battle would end, as New Jersey wouldn’t have to fight against PASPA anymore. Odds are (no pun intended), neither bill will go anywhere.
So, while New Jersey keeps fighting for legal sports betting, progress is being made on daily fantasy sports, which many people see as just another form of wagering on sports. Instead of placing bets on teams, one shifts the betting to individual players or more accurately, a collection of players that does not constitute a real-life team. Sure, DFS might not technically be gambling according to New Jersey law, but let’s be honest, it’s gambling. Regardless of how one defines the game, though, it is fun and should be legal everywhere.
