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New Jersey eSports Betting Bill Passed in the Lower House, Heading to Senate
By Jeff Osienya Aug 03, 2020 LegalityLawmakers in The Garden State are working to introduce electronic sports on the list of legal sports that residents can bet on. The bill received overwhelming support in the assembly and is now waiting for Senate consideration.Last week, a bill to permanently add eSports (electronic sports) to New Jersey’s list of legal sports that players in the state can bet on was unanimously passed. This bill was passed in the assembly, the lower house of the state legislature with Assemblymen Eric Houghtaling and Ralph Caputo as the sponsors. Should the senate rubber-stamp the bill, eSports in New Jersey would be legalized under skill-based competitions.
Currently, there are plenty of sports that residents of the Garden State are allowed to wager on, but the law doesn’t have any definition for skill-based competitions such as eSports. The legislators backing this bill acknowledged that hundreds of millions of people follow electronic sports globally via online channels or play the games themselves, and the volume is growing rapidly. It therefore makes a lot of sense to include eSports to help with the growth and success of the diminished industry after COVID-19’s impact.
A Welcome Alternative After Slowdown in Traditional Sports
Assemblyman Houghtaling, one of the champions of this new bill indicated that now more than ever, a lot of people have shown a lot of interest in this type of gaming. As such, the state needs to seize this golden opportunity to expand legal wagering beyond the conventional sporting events.
True to Houghtaling’s statement, if you look at the last couple of months especially between March and April when the pandemic crisis was at its peak, eSports betting had a major leap globally. Sportsbook switched to offering wagers on virtual sports competitions and Nevada was the first state to include electronic sports under its legal sports betting catalog in April.
At that time, it seemed like a passing storm but after every month that the pandemic exists, the reality continues to sink in for both sportsbooks, regulators and even sports fans themselves that a new era of sports betting is coming.
COVID-19 The Gamechanger
The wake of the Coronavirus pandemic has drastically reshaped the gaming industry to scales that no one had foreseen. Compared to all other states, Nevada has been at the forefront of taking the bull by the horns, adapting with every changing circumstance. For example, other than regulating eSports in April, sportsbooks in the state resolved to creative measures to cope with social distancing requirements during casino closures such as adopting drive-thru registration booths to take in new patrons.
Other states like Rhode Island have taken a more decisive direction by doing away with the requirement for players to show up in person to create a gaming account altogether, making it easier for new members to sign up and bet online. Illinois and Iowa are also looking to follow in the footsteps of Nevada in eradicating in-person registration requirements.
With New Jersey poised for jumping into the electronic sports bandwagon soon, it won’t be long before more states gear up to allow eSports betting on their list of regulated betting games. Given that eSports was one of the few activities that players could and can wager on during pandemic related closures, it’s only a matter of time before other gambling legal states heed to the call. As radical as some of these changes may seem, this is what it will take for the industry to move forward.
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