For Me, Six Times Was A Charm
Legislative calendars are winding down in several US states keen on legalizing sports betting and lawmakers are throwing everything against the wall to see if it will stick.
The Bulletin Board
NEWS: Minnesota’s efforts to legalize sports betting are getting messier by the day.
WEEKEND CATCHUP: Thoughts on NC’s promising start; AC labor leader concerned about foot traffic; PrizePicks upgrades its HQ.
NEWS: Mississippi takes a last-minute swing at legalizing mobile sports betting.
NEWS: The Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow kicks off today.
AROUND the WATERCOOLER: When you point a finger in blame, three fingers point back at you.
STRAY THOUGHTS: No results found.
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Minnesota Sports Betting Is an Absolute Mess
Minnesota sports betting has a new bill to consider, as State Sen. John Marty has introduced SF 5330. While maintaining tribal exclusivity, the new bill would use a New York-style bidding process.
Potential operators would need to submit a competitive bid package within six months of the bill’s effective date. Applicants need to list the total number of partners they will host and the tax rate they are willing to pay, which must be at least 40%.
The bill cuts out racetracks and delivers 50% of the tax revenues collected to problem gambling, 25% to addiction and mental health treatment, and 255 to the general fund.
The proposal also bans all wagers on college sports and in-play bets.
The state’s other bill, SF 1949, has undergone several changes (at the behest of Sen. John Marty), including a prohibition on in-play wagers.
As I recently noted, these types of changes reek of desperation:
“Maryland and Minnesota aren’t so much adding things to gain support; they’re tinkering. They’re putting band-aids on legislation that needs medical intervention to try to make everyone happy, which almost always makes no one happy.”
At the same time, the Minnesota Racing Commission’s recent authorization of historical horse racing (HHR) is causing an uproar among stakeholders and is yet another hurdle that sports betting will need to maneuver around.
“This was really poorly thought out, and it’s not going to end well,” Rep. Zack Stephenson, the lead sponsor of the House bill to legalize sports betting, told the Star-Tribune. “The Racing Commission does not have the power to override state law and place gambling devices at the tracks.”
Stephenson has already filed a bill, HF 5274, prohibiting HHR machines at tracks. According to Star-Tribune reporting, the move also deepens the rift between tribes and tracks on the sports betting front.
Bottom line: Minnesota is a mess.
Weekend Catchup: NC Check-In; Cannibalization Concerns in AC; PrizePicks Moving to New HQ
North Carolina’s early results: I had the privilege of talking to CDC Gaming Reports’ Rege Behe about the early performance of the North Carolina mobile sports betting market. The story also quotes Joseph Solosky, the Managing Director of Sports Betting at NASCAR, and Bill Squadron, an Assistant Professor at Elon University.
There goes that cannibalization concern again: Donna DeCaprio, president of Unite Here Local 54, told the Press of AC the February gaming numbers “confirm what those of us have been warning about over the past year—that attendance in our brick-and-mortar buildings is going in the wrong direction. It is incredibly troubling to see that six of the nine gaming properties have posted declines of casino-win compared to February 2023 and year-to-date compared to 2023.” This argument is going nowhere and is just one of the reasons online gambling expansion faces a rocky road.
PrizePicks expansion: If PrizePicks is concerned about the current spate of states restricting or prohibiting DFS 2.0 contests, it’s not showing it. Last week, the company announced it was moving to a new headquarters at the Star Metal Building in Atlanta. The new, larger HQ will facilitate PrizePicks’ plans to hire 1,000 employees between now and 2031 - the company currently has 500 full-time and 160 part-time employees.
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Mississippi Is Back In Mobile Sports Betting Conversation
Mississippi lawmakers are throwing everything against the wall to see if something will stick. The Senate Gaming Committee passed HB 774, beating a deadline for bills originating in the House to pass through Senate committees.
The bill, as previously passed by the House, would authorize online sports betting. The Senate Gaming Committee version stripped away any mention of mobile sports betting. Still, by keeping the bill alive, mobile betting can be added back during conference committee - assuming it passes the Senate.
The Senate Gaming Committee has bought the legislature some time, but it will have to act soon, as legislation needs to be passed by April 11.
According to Play USA’s Matthew Kredell, “The agreement centers around tying the fate of the online sports betting bill with SB 2780,” which prevents further land-based casino expansion in the State. SB 2780 would remove some casinos’ opposition to mobile sports betting, per Kredell’s sources.
Should the two bills pass, the plan is for a conference committee to hash out all the details. As such, the contents of the bills don’t matter, as the conference committee can alter them as they see fit.
That said, this is the definition of threading the needle and should be seen as a last-ditch effort.
Welcome to IGA 2024
The Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow kicks off today with four sessions focused on AI and gambling.
The conference kicks into high gear on Tuesday with nine education tracks and 54 sessions. I’ll be closely monitoring the reporting from Anaheim on the following sessions:
At 9:20 AM, FanDuel CEO Amy Howe, Vice Chairman of Morongo Band of Mission Indians James Siva, and Director of Public Affairs for the Pechanga Development Corp. Jacob Mejia will discuss the intersection of tribal sovereignty and the evolving landscape of sports betting.
At 10 AM, Joseph Bunevith, the Director of Client Solutions at GLI, will moderate a panel titled: The Future of Gaming, What’s Next? The discussion will look at trends, from Cashless Wagering to AI to Responsible Gaming to iGaming.
At 11 AM, Judith Shapiro, an attorney at Big Fire Law, will moderate a panel titled: Interior’s Proposed New Gaming Compact Regulations. At the same time, Brendan Bussman, Managing Partner at B Global, will moderate a panel titled: From Land-Based to Online: Transition Strategies for Tribal Casinos.
At 2 PM, Rebeccas George, the Executive Director of the Washington Indian Gaming Association, will moderate a panel titled: Strategic Alliances in Sports Betting: Assessing The Challenges in Choosing Your Partner.
At 3 PM, Victor Rocha, IGA Conference Chair, will moderate a panel titled: The Future of Sports Betting in California: Timelines and Tribes.
Things settle back down on Wednesday and Thursday with just one or two education tracks at any given time. The highlight for STTP readers is an 11 AM session on Thursday moderated by Brendan Bussman, titled Sports and Tribal Leaders Partnerships in Sports.
ICYMI #1: I wrote a feature column on ASIES, the American Indian Science & Engineering Society, a non-profit dedicated to increasing the representation of Indigenous peoples of North America and the Pacific Islands in STEM.
ICYMI #2: IGA Conference Chair Victor Rocha also appeared on the CDC Gaming Show Podcast, where he talked about all things Tribal Gaming.
Victor’s advice for anyone looking to work with tribes: “We welcome dreamers. Hard-working people with big dreams; those are the people we like.”
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Around the Watercooler
Social media conversations, rumors, and gossip.
Chris Grove recently spoke with the New York Times and said what I think a lot of the industry has been thinking: States bear a lot of the responsibility for the social harms of legalized sports betting.
“Sportsbooks should (and increasingly do) recognize their obligations. They can - and must - do more,” Grove went on to say in his LinkedIn post. “But what is less discussed is the inherent obligation of state governments to divert a meaningful amount of the billions of sports betting dollars states receive in tax revenue to mitigate harm, an obligation that many states are simply failing to meet.”
This hits on something I have been saying since 2018: What is the rush? Rushing has given us bad policy and head-scratching rules and regulations, and very few states had the foresight to take a proactive approach toward mitigating social harm.
Lawmakers didn’t truly understand what they were legalizing, and regulators weren’t given the time or resources to understand the industry.
States are finding themselves wholly unprepared to deal with this new industry that has been thrust into their laps, and I’m pretty sure we can all agree that learning on the job is not ideal.
Stray Thoughts
One of my biggest frustrations is fruitlessly searching for an old article I’ve written that has been erased from the internet or whittled down to nothing and integrated into a money page.
The example that precipitated this entry was a discussion I had many years ago with New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement head David Rebuck on the possibility of an international online poker compact. It made me realize that a great deal of the US online gambling story is likely lost to the dumpster heap of the Internet.
The link in this PokerNews article now redirects to a landing page on Bonus.com.
