Internet Betting Will Bring New Jobs to New Jersey
When it gets going at the end of November, the brand new Internet betting industry in New Jersey is widely predicted to bring with it not only new gamblers, but also new jobs to the Atlantic City area.
According to a recent report by the Press of Atlantic City, some of the gambling companies who will be blazing the way in New Jersey are full of big talk about the prospect of increased employment opportunity in the long-struggling gambling city while others have said comparatively little.
Two things are for certain, however. The burgeoning online gambling industry will bring jobs to the state, and they will be a class of jobs that deviate from the normal food service, dealer, and other hotel-related jobs that are standard at Atlantic City’s dozen land-based casino properties.
Industry may draw thousands of tech jobs to the state
The number of new jobs that New Jersey might expect to gain is likely to be counted in the thousands as opposed to the hundreds, says the Press.
While the possibility remains that some of the jobs generated by New Jersey’s entry into the world of regulated iGaming may in fact be located overseas, it has been well-documented that when first-term New Jersey Governor, Republican Chris Christie, signed the iGaming bill into law last February, he did so in order to help create – and preserve – jobs in the Atlantic City area.
Law was designed to help fix stagnant local gambling economy
Christie, who has 2016 presidential aspirations, has long said that he supported the enactment of the Internet betting law in large part to aid the state’s floundering casino industry, on the decline since peaking back in 2006. Under the terms of the New Jersey Internet wagering law, the real-money betting web sites must be tied to a land-based Atlantic City casino. Support and other tech jobs for the sites will thus be located in the seaside resort town.
William J. Pascrell III, a lobbyist who represents online poker Behemoth PokerStars, a company attempting to gain licensing approval from New Jersey regulators, pointed out the Governor’s stance on local job creation.
“All of the jobs I’m talking about are absolutely New Jersey jobs. That (job growth) was a major impetus for the sponsors in the Legislature. In addition, I believe that is what brought us over the goal line for Gov. Christie,” Pascrell was quoted as saying.
All eyes will be on New Jersey launch
Certainly it is in the best interest of state regulators and New Jersey’s casino industry alike that the launch of the real money betting industry in the Garden State goes as smoothly as it possibly can.
Not only is the state hoping that the new betting web sites will usher in a new era for gambling in what was once the East coast’s answer to Las Vegas, but other states that are looking into offering Internet-based betting within their own borders will also be closely observing New Jersey’s launch as a model for their own potential marketplaces.
Pennsylvania (which last year stole the title of second largest gambling market in the United States from Atlantic City), Illinois, California, Massachusetts (a state that is also in the process of expanding land-based casino gambling), and an ever-increasing handful of other states have all looked into regulating some form of Internet betting.
A state-by-state patchwork of regulation is what will likely occur in coming years, as opposed to the regulation of online poker and other casino games at the federal level.
Though bills to legalize online poker or other forms of Internet wagering have circulated in Washington D.C. regularly, no legislation to further the cause of online gambling regulation in the United States has had much luck at the national level, a trend that is likely to continue considering the extremely partisan nature of the current Congress.
