New Jersey racetracks that at the moment provide sports activities betting need privileges to accommodate slot machines. A state senator has obliged the request and has launched laws that seeks to ask state voters to develop gaming at horse racing venues.
Monmouth Park can be allowed slot machines if a proposed invoice in New Jersey fields enough help from lawmakers and voters. The racino measure, nevertheless, faces lengthy odds. (Picture: Equi-Photograph)
New Jersey Sen. Joseph Pennacchio (R-Morris) this week launched Senate Concurrent Decision 14. The statute proposes a constitutional modification giving the state legislature the authority to ascertain slot machine playing at horse racetracks.
Income from the expanded slots can be allotted to the state’s retirement program and would help state horsemen and public investments in Atlantic Metropolis.
New Jersey’s Structure at the moment limits Las Vegas-style on line casino playing to Atlantic Metropolis.
Efforts to permit casinos within the northern a part of the state and slots at racetracks have failed in a number of earlier legislative classes. Pennacchio has been authoring racino laws since 2014 to no avail.
Racino Invoice Particulars
If SCR14 in some way modifications the tide this yr in Trenton and wins sufficient help in every chamber, the statute would ask for slot machines at state-licensed horse racetracks. Voters would weigh in in the course of the 2024 presidential election.
There are at the moment three such qualifying venues, together with The Meadowlands in East Rutherford, Monmouth Park in Oceanport, and Freehold Raceway. Every racetrack at the moment presents on-site and cellular sports activities betting.
If the racetrack slot machine referendum would acquire easy majority help, the New Jersey Legislature would then be cleared to cross laws authorizing such playing on the tracks. The racino slots can be topic to the identical 8% tax that bodily slot machines in Atlantic Metropolis pay on their gross gaming income.
Pennacchio suggests setting apart 60% of that tax cash for the state pension program for public staff. Thirty p.c would go on to the 9 casinos in Atlantic Metropolis, 7% can be used for financial enchancment initiatives in Atlantic Metropolis, and the remaining 3% would profit the horsemen.
The state’s 9 casinos will presumably oppose Pennacchio’s laws, as they’ve executed prior to now.
Atlantic Metropolis’s gaming trade continues to emphasize that it stays in restoration mode from the COVID-19 pandemic. Regardless of brick-and-mortar gaming income up 1.8% by November from the identical 11 months in 2022, the casinos say increased overhead prices have greater than reduce into the gaming will increase.
On line casino slot win from January by November 2023 totaled almost $1.94 billion. That’s 2.5% richer from 2022. Desk win throughout the identical interval fell 0.1% to $679 million. December’s report hasn’t but been revealed.
Gaming Promoting Invoice Filed
Together with Pennacchio’s racino measure, New Jersey is starting its 2024 session with a gaming invoice to restrict how casinos and sportsbooks promote. Senate Invoice 2156 from Sen. Joseph Cryan (D-Union) would limit “promoting for on line casino video games and sports activities swimming pools below sure circumstances.”
These circumstances would come with requiring gaming pursuits to make sure that their advertising and marketing supplies don’t attain people on the state’s self-excluded record or individuals below the authorized gaming age. The invoice would require the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to “promulgate guidelines to limit commercials made by on line casino licensees and sports activities wagering licensees, and their contracted operators, that relate to on line casino video games or sports activities wagering, provided that these commercials are fraudulent or misleading, are directed at people on the lawfully established self-exclusion record, or straight attraction to people below the authorized age to gamble or wager.”
Cryan mentioned it’s very important the state higher protects customers and people who are attempting to restrict their publicity to gaming.
Playing on on line casino video games or sporting occasions is a probably addictive habits that can lead to psychological, social, and monetary stresses to a person, their household, and their neighborhood. Whereas playing in numerous varieties and thru numerous mediums is authorized on this state, it’s essential to take steps to guard weak populations … from the hostile results related to playing,” Cryan mentioned.
Each SCR14 and SB2156 have been directed to the state Senate’s Authorities, Wagering, Tourism & Historic Prevention Committee for preliminary overview.
