New Jersey wants to leapfrog Nevada in 2020

New Jersey is currently the second-largest sports wagering market in the US only behind Nevada. State governor Phil Murphy believes New Jersey can “overtake it and its decades-long head start” as early as 2020.

In the 10 months that New Jersey has allowed legal sports betting, gamblers have wagered more than $2.3 billion, a pace that would put it in the same conversation as Nevada, which took in more than $5 billion in bets last year. Nearly 75 per cent of the state’s wagers placed online.

Phil Murphy wasn’t yet a governor in 2012 when New Jersey began its long way to legalise sports gambling. But he was in the office in May 2018 when Supreme Court ruling in ‘Murphy v. NCAA’ case made it possible for him to sign the legislation legalising sports betting in New Jersey a month later.

Now he believes that New Jersey, with its 9 million residents and proximity to New York where gambling is illegal, can overcome Nevada as a number one gambling state in the country.

“Nevada is clearly in our sights,” Murphy said, speaking at the Betting on Sports America conference. “We can overtake it as early as next year.”