Source : Business Insider
By : THE LEGAL BLITZ
Category : Bail Bond Seminole County , Bail Bondsman in Sanford
The Nuclear Path To Legal Sports Betting
The other Sunday something happened I thought was only possible in dreams — my wife actually asked me to watch football. I owe this small miracle to sports betting. The night prior we were at Delaware Park Casino playing poker when I decided to take advantage of the only legal sports betting East of the Mississippi, albeit a severely limited form. Delaware offers NFL parlay “lottery” cards due to an exception under the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (“PASPA”) that grandfathered in existing sports betting laws in Nevada, Oregon, Montana, and Delaware when enacted in 1992. New Jersey also had an opportunity to legalize full-scale sports betting under PASPA, but bungled doing so in true Jersey fashion.
After filling out a variety of parlay cards, I asked my wife if she wanted to take a crack. She wisely went with the Patriots -6.5 over the Bills, Saints +3.5 over the Seahawks, and Packers +2.5 over the Falcons for a 5.5 to 1 payout. The first two picks hit fairly easily, but the Packers/Falcons game was heading toward a tight finish. With my Steelers on a bye and my fantasy team cruising to a victory, I was milling about the house pretending to be useful when I heard those glorious words: “Steve, come watch the end of this game.” You don’t have to ask me twice. We watched the entire fourth quarter together and celebrated the narrow Packers cover.
Paging Roger Goodell. If you want to pull the NFL’s ratings out of the gutter, here is a great way to do it. Americans are already wagering $149 billion annually on sports through bookies and offshore websites according to the American Gaming Association. By comparison, only $3.3 billion is wagered legally in Nevada sportsbooks. Fortunately, legal sports betting is slowly becoming a matter of “when” rather than “if.” A Congressional committee is now reviewing the incoherent patchwork of federal gaming laws including PASPA, the Wire Act of 1961 and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). Pennsylvania passed a resolution urging Congress to lift the federal ban on sports betting, New York Assemblyman J. Gary Pretlow is planning a legal challenge to PASPA in 2017, and Mississippi is eyeing a way to grab a piece of the potential tax revenue from legal sports betting.
Yet the best way to finally legalize sports betting, might be the craziest way. Despite dropping the ball in the 90s, and a series of recent federal court losses stemming from attempts to legalize sports betting, New Jersey is back at it with its most genius move yet – the so-called nuclear option. Introduced by Assemblymen Ralph Caputo and John Burzichelli, Assembly Bill 4303 would completely repeal New Jersey’s prohibition on sports betting. Doing so would allow anyone to open a sportsbook. In other words, the corner bookie could literally be on every corner.
The Bill has almost no chance of ever passing, but it is an attention-grabbing middle finger to PASPA that might just force Congress’ hand. PASPA prohibits “a governmental entity to sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize by law or compact, . . . a lottery, sweepstakes, or other betting, gambling, or wagering scheme based, directly or indirectly (through the use of geographical references or otherwise), on one or more competitive games in which amateur or professional athletes participate, or are intended to participate, or on one or more performances of such athletes in such games.” By completely removing all laws pertaining to sports betting, such as the seemingly necessary regulation of sportsbook operators, limiting sportsbooks to existing casinos, enforcing taxes, and monitoring wagers for signs of corruption, New Jersey could render PASPA useless. It is also a direct nod to the unintended consequences of a flawed Third Circuit decision preventing the Garden State from legalizing sports betting.
Read more : abovethelaw.com/2016/11/the-nuclear-path-to-legal-sports-betting/
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