NJ Voters Reject In-State College Sports Betting on the Ballot

One year down the line, the efforts by legislators in New Jersey to legalize placing wagers on collegiate level sports betting events held within state lines have borne no fruits. In the ballot exercise on Tuesday, November 2nd, about 57% of the turnouts voted ‘no’ to the ballot question asking whether the state constitution should be changed to expand collegiate sports betting regulation.

The college sports betting expansion ballot question posed to voters in the Garden State on Tuesday read as follows:

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“Do you approve amending the Constitution to permit wagering through casinos and current or former horse racetracks on all college sport or athletic events? Currently, wagering is prohibited on college sport or athletic events that take place in New Jersey. Wagering is also prohibited on an event in which a team from a New Jersey college participates.”

College Sports Betting in NJ Will Remain Off-Limits

Right now, the Garden State only allows its residents to place wagers on collegiate-level athletic sporting competitions that take place outside the state. This regulation (under Assembly Bill 4111) was signed into law by Governor Phill Murphy back on June 11th, 2018, and opened doors for sports betting in racetracks and land-based casinos.

The bill also paved the way for racetracks and land-based casino venues to seek permission to offer online and mobile sports betting in their facilities. Subsequently, the first online sports wager in New Jersey was placed in August 2018, two months after the governor signed the bill into law.

From then on, the sports betting market in the Garden State has been growing exponentially to the point of beating Nevada as the leader of sports betting in the USA. New Jersey’s market has been breaking monthly national records back-to-back in both the sports betting revenue and the handle generated thanks to its rapid growth momentum. After garnering $900 million-plus handles on three different occasions before any other US state, NJ finally managed to crack the $1 billion monthly handle milestone in September.

Of course, collegiate sports betting expansion, the Garden State could have broken even more monthly and annual handle records to ultimately cement its position as the sports betting champion in the US. This amendment would have given NJ residents room to place agers on college teams and events within state lines. Sports fans would legally wager on anything from Seton Hall basketball competitions to Rutgers University football events and any other NCAA tournament games taking place in NJ.

Better still, given that about 90% of sports wagers are placed via online and mobile platforms, the college sports betting measure would have been another strong avenue for revenue generation. Online sportsbook wagers in the Garden State attract a 13% tax rate, much higher than the 8.5% taxation imposed on bets placed via racetracks and land-based casinos. The Office of Legislative Services, a nonpartisan entity, had projected that the measure would have significantly boosted the monies channeled to local governments, the state budget, and the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.

Now that voters in New Jersey have rejected the game-changing measure, the state will continue to have one of the most restrictive collegiate level sports betting regulations nationwide. In the original referendum held a decade ago in 2011, college sports betting wasn’t on the table as legislators feared that student-athletes would end up being enticed to throw or fix matches.  To date, a total of 13 states in the USA have no restrictions against betting on college-level sporting events.

Non-Profits Allowed to Support Their Operations with Games of Chance Proceeds

Well, not all news from the just-concluded November ballot was bad news. Voters in the Garden state okayed a ballot measure that gave non-profits more freedom to use the proceeds generated from games of chance. With 64% approval against 36% rejection, non-profits in NJ are now officially allowed to use the funds collected from bingo, raffles, and other gambling-style games to support their operations.

Initially, the state prohibited non-profits from using the games of chance proceeds in any other way except for educational or religious reasons. The main reason this question was brought to the ballot for the Garden State residents was to give non-profits and their workforce a hand after they were devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.