New Jersey governor Phil Murphy touted his state’s trajectory toward overtaking Nevada as the top sports betting market in the U.S. and also emphasized the industry’s ability to create new technology jobs.
Speaking at SBC’s Betting on Sports America conference in Secaucus on Wednesday, Murphy reported that New Jersey has collected $2 billion in sports wagers since betting became legalized last June. Some experts have told him, he said, that Jersey might surpass Nevada’s total handle “as early as next year.”
Murphy acknowledged that the additional $1.5 million in monthly tax revenue is a relative pittance compared to the state’s $38 billion annual budget. He said that money is helpful but is not the sole aim of legalizing sports betting, which is job protection at racetracks and casinos and job creation in the tech sector.
“We’re going to leverage our built-in advantages to dominate in the marketplace, and not just at the betting counter, but in the technologies that make it possible,” Murphy said.
A number of sports betting operators have either opened offices or established headquarters in New Jersey, particularly in Jersey City, over the last year. Murphy cited an fDi Magazine study ranking Jersey City as the top Small American City of the Future for best connectivity, with nearby Newark, Paterson, and Elizabeth also all in the top six.
“Our embrace of new technology, especially mobile platforms, has led to nearly 75 percent of wagers being placed online,” Murphy said.
The SBC conference assembled many of the sports betting industry’s leaders—both in the emerging U.S. market and the established U.K. market—and Murphy used the forum to pitch his state as America’s “intellectual and technical leader” in sports betting.
“Our belief in the job creation potential of this industry lives up to the advice the all-time hockey great Wayne Gretzky got from his father when he was first learning the sport,” Murphy said, “and I quote his dad Walter, ‘Go to where the puck is going, not to where it has been.’”