A new bill seeking to bring the growing US sportsbook market under Federal control was jointly introduced in the US Congress on Wednesday by Republican senator Orrin Hatch and Democratic Senator Charles Schumer.
The proposed bill is expected to face strong opposition from the Casino and gaming industry and the numerous States including New Jersey who recently won a seven-year court battle to have the 1992 PASPA law that had prohibited sports betting in most US states repealed by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruled that PASPA was unconstitutional and that the states should be able to decide for themselves whether or not they wished to legalize sports betting.
Hatch, who co-authored Paspa, and Schumer are not calling for sports betting to once more be prohibited, but instead seek to take away the freedom states like New Jersey now have to legalize sports betting.
New Jersey was quick to do it and in less than six months has seen eight sportsbooks launched and nearly a billion dollars taken in wagers.
The Hatch-Schumer bill, introduced with the aim of “protecting consumers and sports integrity” calls for the states to seek federal approval before they can introduce legislation legalizing sports betting.
The Bill also calls for the creation of a national clearinghouse for betting data and demands that sportsbooks only use the official data (scores etc) as provided by the professional leagues and sporting bodies about which the sports wagers are being made.
Reaction to the bill has been mixed.
The NFL, the National Council on Problem Gambling, the US Tennis Association and the NCAA have praised the bill.
But Dina Titus, the US Representative from Nevada where sports betting has never been prohibited, said the bill “would inject uncertainty into an established and regulated industry and risk causing bettors and operators to leave the regulated market.”
Sara Slane, senior vice president of public affairs for the American Gaming Association, said the legislation is “an unprecedented and inappropriate expansion of federal involvement in the gaming industry, which is currently one of the most strictly regulated in the country.”
She added: “Additional areas this bill seeks to address – including the mandatory use of official league data and the creation of a national sports wagering clearinghouse – can, and should, be decided by marketplace negotiations between private businesses and cooperative agreements among jurisdictions.
“In the mere six months since the US Supreme Court paved the way for legal, regulated sports betting, significant developments on both of these fronts have already occurred without any federal involvement.”
Other gaming industry observers feel that the bill is going to increase rather than decrease the numbers of states currently looking at introducing sports betting and the influence it will have on their tax intakes and speed up legislation to have it legalized.
With only a few days remaining of the legislative season, the bill is most unlikely to be passed this year and while Hatch is retiring from the Senate and describes the bill a “placeholder,” Schumer is insisting that he will push hard for the bill to go to a vote “very soon.”
