Daily fantasy sports bill making progress in New Jersey

Whilst the US Congress appears to be dragging its feet on a September 2015 review request on daily fantasy sports by New Jersey Assemblyman Frank Pallone (see previous Reports), the Garden State legislature is pushing ahead with intrastate measures in both the Senate and the House.

The publication NJ.com reported over the weekend that the Senate proposal was approved by the State Senate Committee last month and is at second reading stage in the Budget Appropriations Committee, and an Assembly companion bill has been launched.

State Sen. Jim Whelan introduced the measure, which requires daily fantasy sports companies to be regulated and vetted in the same way online gambling companies are.

“Clearly it’s popular, and New Jersey and New York are big markets for them so considering the legal issues they’ve run into in New York we want to bring a regulatory framework here that could be a model for other states,” Whelan’s Chief of Staff Mike Suleiman tolf NJ.com, adding that consumer safeguards include verifying that a player is at least 18-years-old and making it illegal for someone with inside knowledge of games to participate.

DFS market leader DraftKings and the Fantasy Sports Trade Association have been working closely with legislators on the bill as they search for legal clarity and certainty for the vertical.

According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, there were over 57 million people involved in leagues in the United States and Canada alone by 2014, making the vertical a multi-billion dollar business where the average player spends $465 each year.

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