Amaya Inc. today announced that it expects to initially launch its PokerStars brand in New Jersey on Monday, March 21, 2016. The launch quickly follows the September 2015 authorization by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) to operate the PokerStars and Full Tilt brands in the State. Amaya currently expects to conduct an interim testing period with the DGE and a beta period for a limited player base beginning in mid-March. “PokerStars is the global leader in online poker and trusted by its customers for its robust and innovative technology, world-class security and game-integrity. We are honored and…

A New Jersey daily fantasy sports bill that a state senator plans to introduced is the strictest attempt to regulate the DFS industry. “We have a draft of a bill that we are circulating to a variety of people, the Division of Gaming Enforcement, the Casino Control Commission, other legislators, as well as people in the fantasy sports industry, to take a look at what might be appropriate for New Jersey to do,” state Senator Jim Whelan told Legal Sports Report in an interview on Wednesday. “Other states obviously are looking at this; we’re not talking about doing anything to ban it or to make it…

New Jersey’s effort to offer legalized sports betting was given new life Wednesday when a federal appeals court agreed to reconsider its decision to prohibit gambling on games. The move vacated an Aug. 25 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia that upheld a lower-court ruling that had voided state legislation on sports gambling. The judges held then, in a 2-to-1 decision, that New Jersey’s efforts to allow casinos and racetracks to take bets violated the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, or Paspa, which was passed in 1992. “We acknowledge New…

The federal ban on sports betting in all but four states was upheld Tuesday, dealing a blow to New Jersey’s latest effort to expand gambling options to help its struggling casinos and racetracks. But the 2-1 ruling by a panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia left the door open for New Jersey to further appeal the matter to the full court. “We are reviewing the opinion, and the dissent, and considering our legal options,” said Leland Moore, a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office. The state has been trying since 2009 to legalize sports…

Eighteen months ago, the Golden Nugget was hardly an afterthought in a New Jersey online casino market dominated by the likes of the Borgata and Caesars. Yet by April 2015, the Nugget was topping the revenue charts, owning 31 percent of the market and becoming the first operator to generate more than $3 million in casino revenue. In the latest issue of iGaming Business North America, Landry’s VP of Online Gaming, Thomas Winter, recounts Golden Nugget’s meteoric rise from virtual obscurity to Operator of the Year. The Golden Nugget’s entry into New Jersey’s iGaming market was marred by technical difficulties,…

With proposals to expand casino gambling to other parts of New Jersey gaining momentum, Atlantic City is faced with an existential choice: fight to the end to try to keep it from happening, or accept it as inevitable and extract the most concessions it can from new, in-state competitors. It’s a question the city and its political and business supporters need to answer soon. Two bills that would ask voters whether to amend the state constitution and expand gambling beyond Atlantic City have been proposed, and lawmakers are touting casino projects in the Bergen County Meadowlands, Jersey City, Newark and…