Another One Bites The Dust
Maine is the latest state to see its dreams of legalizing online gambling go down the drain, with its chances reduced to practically zero after a failed vote in the House.
The Bulletin Board
NEWS: Maine online casino bill fails to pass the House, but a glimmer of hope remains in the Senate.
BEYOND the HEADLINE: The industry needs to figure out how to create an online casino bill that can pass.
LOOSE ENDS: Virginia skill game debate is far from over; Montana won’t prohibit college player props.
NEWS: Dispatches from the Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow.
BEYOND the HEADLINE: Understanding the tribal perspective.
AROUND the WATERCOOLER: Double Trouble.
STRAY THOUGHTS: The Top 1% of the Top 1% are built differently.
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Maine’s Online Casino Legislation Is on Life Support
And then there were none… or almost none.
Maryland came off the board as an online casino candidate earlier this week; mid-week, it was Maine’s turn.
The Maine House of Representatives failed to pass a bill (LD 1777) that would bring online casinos to the state by a 71-74 vote.
As Bonus.com’s Heather Fletcher reports, there is still a sliver of hope. The bill received an “ought not to pass” motion from the Joint Standing Committee on Veterans and Legal Affairs, sending it to the Senate, even though it failed in the House. If the Senate passes the measure (an extreme longshot), it would return to the House for consideration.
The central point of contention in Maine is the exclusion of the state’s two commercial casinos. LD 1777 gives Maine’s four tribes exclusive rights to online casinos—the tribes currently have exclusive rights to Maine’s mobile betting industry.
Beyond the Headline: An Online Casino Bill That Can Pass
Passing an online casino bill has never been easy. There was some hope that sports betting would act as a pathway, allowing lawmakers, regulators, and skeptical land-based casino operators to become familiar with and see the benefits of online gambling.
The opposite has occurred. The rapid spread of sports betting and operators’ pedal-to-the-metal approach have solidified opposition and given possible allies and neutral parties pause. Scandals, a glut of advertising, growing problem gambling concerns, and countless self-inflicted paper cuts the industry has given itself have caused a pullback.
Passing a bill in the current environment is going to be tricky. At the end of the day, it will likely come down to how desperate a state is for money, but here are a few quick thoughts that could help overcome some of the opposition to online gambling.
Let the voters decide: Considering the legislative miasma and connected and unconnected issues that keep finding their way into the online casino debate, referendums are the way to go. They also give lawmakers concerned about a vote to expand gambling a convenient excuse, as they can now say, “We let the voters decide.” And other than California, the voters have always chosen yes.
Create a land-based gambling fund: Cannibalization concerns aren’t going away, and the only way to alleviate those concerns is to create some type of stipend (like Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr did in New York) for potentially impacted workers.
Problem gambling (over)funding: Not only is this just good policy, but the only way to drown out the “won’t anyone think of the children” crowd is to poke a hole in their argument big enough to drive a Brinks truck through.
Full transparency: Like the recently passed West Virginia law that sets up a research program with West Virginia University or New Jersey’s recent move to break out revenue by operators, the industry would be wise to be more transparent and demand more transparency.
Address advertising: The inevitable glut of sports betting advertisements following legalization is being used as an “I told you so” debate point by the anti-online gambling crowd. The industry would be wise to proactively address this.
Loose Ends: VA Skill Game Debate; Montana Won’t Prohibit College Props
Virginia Gov. Amends Skill Games Bill: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has sent a bill authorizing skill games in Virginia back to the legislature with several significant changes. Youngkin’s changes call for a higher tax rate, allowing locales to prohibit the machines, prohibiting them from within a half-mile of churches, daycares, and houses of worship, and from metro areas with existing gambling establishments. Skill game supporters are calling Youngkin’s proposal a de facto ban.
Montana Lottery says “NO” to college player prop ban: As reported earlier this week, Montana will not be joining the ranks of states prohibiting wagers on individual college players. Montana Lottery Director Bob Brown said, “Regarding the specifics of player prop betting, it is not in our immediate plans to discontinue college player prop markets offered through our sportsbooks. Montana’s local teams already have a limited number of markets, which we are not inclined to limit further.”
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California Sports Betting a Hot Topic at IGA
I have pulled a few quotes from an Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow panel titled Balancing Act: Tribal Sovereignty in the New Frontier of Sports Wagering. The comments from FanDuel CEO Amy Howe and tribal leaders, diligently reported by CDC Gaming Report’s Rege Behe, pretty much speak for themselves. Still, I’ve added a couple of thoughts after each.
Apology given: “At the end of the day, if wagering is going to be done legally in California, it’s going to be done with and through the 100-plus tribes there,” FanDuel CEO Amy Howe said. “For a quarter of a century, the tribes have done a phenomenal job of stewarding the Class III gaming licenses. So, obviously, for us, it was a big learning experience. It’s critical for us to do this together and not against one another.”
FanDuel has been making all the right moves and saying all the right things of late, but I’m curious to see what happens when sports betting discussions reemerge. Will FanDuel et al. sit quietly in the backseat while California tribes drive the car?
Apology (somewhat) accepted: The moderator of the panel, Jacob Mejia, Pechanga Development Corporation director of public affairs, commended FanDuel for appearing at IGA. Mejia said that while they weren’t running for office, commercial sportsbooks were on the ballot in 2022, “and depending upon how this rolls out going forward, you may be on the ballot again. At a minimum, the industry that you represent will be on the ballot again at some point in time in the future.”
I believe Mejia is telling FanDuel and other commercial sports betting operators that 2022 was more than a difference of opinion between two competing businesses; it was an ugly political battle. The 2022 mobile sports betting effort was “running for office” and didn’t understand its constituency.
Our way or the highway: Morongo Band of Mission Indians Vice Chairman James Siva replied, “It’s about defending and protecting everything we’ve built. The expansion of gaming is going to happen. It’s a matter of when, not where. But when that does happen, tribes will remain in control in California. We’ll partner with companies, we’ll utilize their products, but again, tribes are the operators in California.”
This is about as blunt a response as you’ll see (perhaps only outdone by Siva’s comment in the Beyond the Headline section below). Siva also noted that tribal gaming in California is a $40 billion industry, which, if I’m reading between the lines, is a warning that if you try to push us aside in any way, we will blow up the next effort, too, because sports betting is small potatoes.
Beyond the Headline: The Tribal Perspective
Tribes don’t respond well to, as Maynard James Keenan would call them, smiley glad-hands.
Beginning about 15 years ago, I was knee-deep in covering the first fights over the legalization of online gambling. Back then, it wasn’t sports betting or even online casinos; it was poker. And like today, California was a battleground, with outside forces trying to smooth-talk or bypass California’s gaming tribes.
It took me a long time (and the help of many tribal friends) to realize what I wasn’t seeing because I was so heavily invested in legalized online poker. I was so focused on one side, the side trying to legalize online poker, that I neglected the tribal perspective and saw them as obstructionists.
If you think tribes are “stalling” or “derailing” legalization, you may need a factory reset. Go to the Indian Gaming Association Tradeshow, speak with tribal leaders, and read up on tribes pre- and post-IGRA to fully understand what they’ve built, what gaming means to these communities, and why they might be skeptical of outsiders coming in with promises of riches.
I have a pretty strong understanding of the importance, but the true impact and the stakes never cease to amaze me. This was once again made clear during my interviews for my recently published ASIES column when I learned that the San Manuel Tribe donated $25 million to a Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital a few years ago. It wasn’t the amount that hit me; it was the reason.
When the tribe didn’t have a hospital, doctors and nurses would travel on horseback to the reservation to deliver babies and give vaccines. As I was told, the tribe never forgot that. And that’s just one of dozens of similar stories I’ve heard.
Yes, tribes have good memories, and those memories can cut in two directions. As Morongo Band of Mission Indians Vice Chairman James Siva said, “We’ve seen efforts in the past come in and divide and conquer tribes that weren’t successful… We don’t forget; we remember, and that’s not going to work again. So I would say get out of our way. We know what we’re doing. This is our industry.”
Around the Watercooler
Social media conversations, rumors, and gossip.
We’ve got updates on two significant sports betting scandals.
The first involves the LA Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani. In a new piece, the New York Times reports (paywall) that Ohtani’s former interpreter was “able to change the settings on Ohtani’s bank account so Ohtani would not receive alerts and confirmations about transactions.”
The second involves Toronto Raptors Jontay Porter. According to an ESPN article, Porter could face a lifetime ban from the NBA if the allegations against him prove true. The author of the piece tweeted the following:
Stray Thoughts
A very interesting tweet from professional poker player Will Jaffe speaks to something I often say regarding martial arts. Competing against equally talented opponents requires a very different approach than fighting some random on the street. You use the basics to defeat an untrained opponent; advanced moves are used against another professional fighter. As Jaffe explains, the super-high-roller tournaments are at a different level with different stakes.
“Before doing Triton, I didn’t understand why tournament players took so long to act, and it always tilted me. I knew they were under a lot of pressure to make difficult decisions on the biggest stage, but it’s just 2 cards. Can it really be that hard? And the answer was a resounding yes.
“The level of competition in these big buy-in tournaments is insane. To say these players are trying extremely hard just doesn’t do it justice. They are scrapping, clawing, and fighting to the death for every inch. If you aren’t willing to do that, then you aren’t going to have a chance to compete with them.”
This next part speaks to what former NBA bench warmer Brian Scalabrine would say to non-pros in 1-on-1 challenge matches: “I’m closer to Lebron James than you are to me.”
“I also came in under the impression that there wasn’t a huge skill difference between the guys at the top and the ones right underneath them. There is a lot of variance in tournament poker and how much better is someone that plays 100ks than someone that plays 10 and 25ks? I walked away feeling like the difference was much bigger than I had initially thought.”