Sports betting’s legislative blitzkrieg stalled in 2022, with just two states, Kansas and Maine, passing mobile sports betting laws. Two more states, Massachusetts and North Carolina, could still join the list of legal mobile sports betting states, but time is running out in both locales.
Wagers.com sat down with Brandt Iden, the Head of Government Affairs for Sportradar, to get his thoughts on where these two locales stand.
Iden on North Carolina
Steve Ruddock: North Carolina keeps see-sawing between positive and negative, and it seems like the sense of urgency in the legislature is next to zero. What are your thoughts on North Carolina’s chances this year?
Brandt Iden: I’m overly optimistic. I have been, I was big on North Carolina last year. I’m still big on North Carolina this year. I think that all the components are in place to get this done.
North Carolina is up against a hard stop on June 30, which is a short session for them. There’s a bill that’s now in the second chamber, and obviously, retail is already up and operating so the state has a familiarity with betting. In my opinion, all signs point to it getting done this year.
I think that there’s still some discrepancies with the governor in terms of the tax rate, but that’s not insurmountable. I remember having that discussion up until the very end with my governor. Tax rates are one of the things that can be worked out. I think once you get the stakeholders in alignment, which appears to have happened in North Carolina, that tax rate discussion falls where it falls.
So, I’m pretty confident that North Carolina will have something in place, and we may even see mobile sports betting up and launched by the time football season rolls around.
We’ll see though, they do have a short timeline. They’ve only got one month to get it done, but sometimes when you put these guardrails in place, and you put time limits on things, negotiations happen a little bit more quickly sometimes.
Steve Ruddock: One of the things I constantly say, and only half tongue-in-cheek, is that if it’s gambling legislation, it passes at the very last hour.
Brandt Iden: Always. It’s one of those issues that everything else gets done first, then it sits there and gets negotiated on the way out the door. That’s just always the way it goes.
Iden on Massachusetts
Steve Ruddock: Shifting gears to Massachusetts, my home state has two very different bills that a conference committee will try to align. Massachusetts is one of those states where everything looks good on paper, but it just never seems to get done. How does Massachusetts get a sports betting bill across the finish line and what are the actual sticking points?
Brandt Iden: There’s some major discrepancies with the bills in conference committee at the moment.
I’ll start at the beginning, but the spoiler alert is I’m not super confident that Massachusetts will get it done this year. It seems like we’re always sort of teased by Massachusetts every year. The bill has gotten to this stage, so that’s one positive. I’ll put it this way, this is how it happened with retail casinos in Massachusetts. If folks remember it took a lot of conversation. It got to conference committee, and something was worked out. So, this is a path that has happened before in Massachusetts where we have seen a resolution.
Bottom line, I’m not saying it won’t get done. I’m just not as confident as I am for North Carolina because of those huge issues.
There are two major issues in my mind that really need to be dealt with in Massachusetts, one is the advertising ban. The other is the collegiate ban, which is one that we haven’t seen anywhere else in the country. It’s not just in-state institutions, it’s every college team and no collegiate betting whatsoever. The two chambers are uniquely positioned on both issues with the House at one end of the spectrum and the Senate at the other. The House Speaker [Ron Mariano] has said, I’m not going to do a bill that doesn’t include collegiate betting and the Senate Majority Leader [Karen Spilka] has intimated this is kind of a non-starter.
Spilka has said she doesn’t really care about gaming, and if it’s going to get done, this is the way I want it. You have a situation there where I think it comes down to the politics. And by that, I mean, I think it’s going to be something outside of gaming that moves the needle on whether or not gaming gets done in Massachusetts.
Having been around a lot of these conversations, there’s always a lot of other horse-trading that goes on behind the scenes. There are always other bills that lawmakers want. There’s always other issues individual members are focused on for their district, something that’s really important to them in their districts. And they may trade votes for something like sports betting, which they may not care about as much.
I think that’s what it comes down to in Massachusetts. There can be a compromise on those issues, potentially if both sides are willing to trade something else to maybe get there.
Steve Ruddock: The advertising restrictions are quite unique to Massachusetts.
Brandt Iden: The advertising restrictions are very unique. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, and an interesting test case because there’s a tremendous amount of conversation right now going on in the marketplace about advertising.
