The lower house of the legislature, the state Assembly, voted 58-17 to approve the bill. Currently, federal law limits sports betting or lotteries to four states: Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon.

One of the bill's sponsors, Assemblyman Nelson Albano (D., Cape May), says, "the people of New Jersey deserve at least a chance to vote on this issue."

Albono and others also pledge to amend the bill to include sports wagering at the state's horse racetracks if it passed in the Senate.

If approved, a referendum question would be placed on November's ballot. If passed then, sports gaming would be legal in Atlantic City.

The state senate is also moving forward with its own version of the legislation, and the sponsor of the senate bill, Sen. Ray Lesniak (D., Union), also expressed a desire to see sports gambling at tracks to bolster the $1.5 billion horse-racing industry in New Jersey.

An $800 million business

The move to legalize sports gambling - opposed by the National Football League - comes at a time when slots parlors in Delaware and Pennsylvania are cutting into Atlantic City's revenues.

Backers reckon Atlantic City could reap approximately $800 million a year from sports gambling.

Some experts suggest that gambling on sports could have been legalized 15 years ago, if local policymakers had taken advantage of a provision in the federal law which was passed in 1992 and allowed sports gambling in the states where it already existed.

Sponsored by then-U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley (D, N.J.) and backed by professional sports, any state that had allowed gambling for 10 years prior to Jan. 1, 1993, could invoke a sports-wagering law within a year. But New Jersey did not act in a timely fashion.

Observers note the assembly vote, taken just this week, was the furthest a sports-gambling bill had advanced in the legislature since 1993.

State Sen. Jim Whelan, whose district includes Atlantic City, said he supported sports gambling, and did not forsee a problem moving the bill forward in the Senate.

"I believe New Jersey voters would support having state-regulated sports betting in casinos, but I don't want to create false hopes," Whelan said.

To remove the obstacle, the state can either push Congress to repeal the ban or challenge it in court as a violation of states' rights, a provision in the U.S. Constitution.

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