Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s long fight to overturn a federal ban on sports betting has earned him honors from the trade group Sports betting Community.
Christie will be inducted into the group’s Sports betting Hall of Fame—created in 2016—at a ceremony as part of the Betting on Sports America conference April 23-25 in New York and New Jersey.
Christie led New Jersey’s fight to overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act which created a ban on sports betting in all but four U.S. states. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal law, current New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy was in office, but Christie’s name topped the state’s lawsuit through most of its journey through the courts.
The award comes as Christie continues to up his public profile, having served as head of President Donald Trump’s transition team and recently authoring the book “Let Me Finish.”
Christie also delivered the keynote address at the winter meeting of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States in New Orleans where he addressed New jersey’s long fight to implement legal sports betting.
“The leagues—the arrogance of the leagues—is the other thing we need to talk about,” Christie said at the meeting. “All of you now are going to have these folks coming in to your state capitals and arguing to you that they should somehow now get something for free from you, that they were unwilling to settle on when they were in the midst of litigation.”
Christie was picked for the hall due to his persistence in challenging PASPA.
“Governor Christie is the first politician we have inducted into the Sports Betting Hall of Fame, but he is there with good reason,” said Rasmus Sojmark, Founder and CEO of SBC in a press release. “Without the political will from the governor’s office it is questionable that PASPA would ever have been challenged in the courts.”
Christie said he is proud to be named to the hall.
“Sports betting was held back for too long by the unfair federal laws, so I was more than happy to be the first to make a stand against them,” he said in the release. “I’m very proud and gratified to be recognized by the sports betting industry in this year now that PASPA is a distant memory.”
