The New Jersey Assembly’s Tourism, Gaming and the Arts Committee voted unanimously on 14 September to report Assembly Resolution 150 favorably. The resolution urges the state’s sports wagering licensees, casino licensees, their contracted operators and internet gaming affiliates to make sure their VIP programs do not target patrons “known to be gambling addicts, or who have exhibited signs of problem gambling” with personalized marketing, including messages featuring professional athletes or celebrities. Assemblyman William F. Moen Jr. (D-5, Camden and Gloucester), who chairs the committee, introduced it on 10 September. The account of the meeting comes from CDC Gaming Reports, an industry trade publication; the text and the committee statement are public documents.

The resolution is the state-legislative answer to a story that broke in July: FanDuel had sent a high-value customer a personalized video from Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported it on 9 July.

What the preamble puts on the record

The resolution’s whereas clauses describe the mechanism with more specificity than regulatory language usually allows. Professional athletes, it states, “have been used in personalized gambling advertisements by sports wagering operators and Internet gaming affiliates under VIP marketing programs to encourage individuals to continue betting.”

Its example: in 2024 a customer already in severe financial distress received a personalized video in which a professional ballplayer said “…FanDuel wanted to make sure your Thanksgiving was extra special” and referenced the man’s son. The video, the resolution states, “was prepared at the request of the individual’s VIP manager at FanDuel and was intended to entice further gambling by the individual.” The recipient had reportedly already lost more than $1.5 million through the platform, taken out several mortgages on his home and sold shares of his business to fund his betting.

Harper has said he did not know the video would be used as a promotion, that he recorded it through the video-sharing site Cameo in November 2024 in response to a request for a “holiday video for Terry,” and that FanDuel added its logo and used the clip without his knowledge or consent. The resolution records only that the athlete was unaware of its purpose.

The gap it names

The operative finding is about rules, not conduct. MLB permits players to sign endorsement deals with sportsbooks as long as they do not encourage betting on baseball — but, the resolution states, “there are no rules prohibiting the targeting of known gambling addicts or those who have exhibited signs of problem gambling.” Three members of Congress wrote to the MLB commissioner and the MLBPA’s interim executive director demanding an end to partnerships with sportsbooks running VIP programs. Per the resolution, FanDuel’s written reply pointed to its responsible-gaming programs and did not directly address the practice of targeting certain patrons with athlete- or celebrity-fronted advertising to encourage continued betting.

What it does, and does not, do

AR 150 is a resolution. It does not amend the Casino Control Act, does not direct the Division of Gaming Enforcement to write a rule, and carries no penalty. What it does is instruct the General Assembly’s clerk to send copies to every sports wagering licensee, casino licensee, contracted operator and i-gaming affiliate in the state, to the commissioner of Major League Baseball, to the MLBPA’s executive director and to each member of Congress from New Jersey — and it asks the leagues and their players’ associations to “reject participation in such targeted VIP marketing programs when directed to vulnerable patrons.”

That distinction between urging and regulating is the whole content of the measure. The practices it describes were not already unlawful in New Jersey; the resolution asks licensees to stop them voluntarily, on the record, with the committee vote attached.

Moen, the sponsor: “It was explicitly made clear that this video was prepared to further entice gambling by this individual,” and “This resolution simply urges the prohibition of this kind of advertising to prevent this type of situation from occurring in the future. This is something that we see as a problem.”

The companion measure

The same committee approved A5210, also sponsored by Moen, which requires people on self-exclusion lists to watch educational and counseling videos before they can be removed, and permits third-party requests for exclusion in defined circumstances, including where a third party can show financial responsibility for funds that might be deposited for gambling. The Racing Commission and the Division of Gaming Enforcement would write the implementing regulations. The Sports Betting Alliance opposed the bill and did not testify, according to CDC Gaming.

Self-exclusion is the load-bearing part of responsible-gambling policy: it is the one mechanism by which a customer who has asked to be kept out is supposed to be kept out. A measure that adds friction to exiting the list, and lets family members initiate exclusion, addresses the exit rather than the advertising.

Why the VIP program is the story, not the celebrity

Acquisition advertising is visible and regulated at the margins. Retention marketing is neither. A VIP program exists because the revenue from a small number of high-volume customers is disproportionate to what it costs to keep them, and the data that identifies a customer as worth keeping — stake size, frequency, session length, deposit patterns, chasing behaviour — is the same data that identifies him as in trouble. Nothing in the operator’s compliance obligations requires the two uses to be separated, which is what the resolution is pointing at and declining to mandate.

What happens next is mostly out of the legislature’s hands. The resolution can be transmitted; the Division of Gaming Enforcement can be asked to act on it; the leagues and the players’ association can tighten rules that currently say nothing about targeting. Whether any of that happens is the measure of whether AR 150 was a step or a statement.