Battle over sports betting

Canada's gaming officials are having a tough debate with their lawmakers for them to vote on a bill passed legalizing sport books that have the style of Las Vegas. As this happens New Jersey prepares a hearing on Wednesday over its effort to make sport betting legal.

From a bill that was introduced two years ago, the bill permitted Canadians to wager on a single sporting event one at a time. This was also seen as efforts to draw the attention of U.S gamblers across its border from states that are near Canada. Among these states are Detroit and New York.

Single –game betting is against the law in Canada and is under the Canadian criminal code. Therefore, these bettors or gamblers in this country are offered sports lottery from which they are allowed to play three of more games.

From a statement made over the phone by Paul Burns, the vice president of public affairs the Canadian Gaming Association that is based in Toronto, he compared their Canada with Delaware for they too offer parlays cards for sport betting. He said that this was a knowledge  known by all sport bettors.
He further added that Canadian bettors would be discouraged on wagering on the National Football League or the National Hockey League games with legal bookmarkers of those offshore if they legalized sport betting.
Burns pointed that illegal sport betting was an industry that generated up to $ 14 billion while the revenue collected from sport wagering in only gave $ 500 million and therefore a major blow to the Canadian government.
The NHL also joined this battles citing that there are cases of game fixing and corruption by this sport betting bodies. The league followed suit to stop New Jersey from making sport wagering legal.
In his statement he added that Canadians could however gamble online and in all European sport books. Some of the sport books he listed were Ladbrokes, William Hill and Skybet. He said that to be able to make a bet they could use their credit cards and e-wallets and use the same for online withdrawals.
He pointed that the bill had not only been supported by the British Columbia Lottery but also had the support of eight other provinces.
However, politicians and gaming official in New Jersey argued that these would impact on the revenues which has shown a decline for the past six years in a row.
Specialist also cited the impact this action could have on the development of that state compared to others states like Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware.