DraftKings is a Daily Sports Fantasy giant. Its online sportsbook opened first when New Jersey legalized sports betting in June. Now it’s doing its level best to ensure that Massachusetts, its home state, becomes one of the first to follow New Jersey’s lead by launching a pro-betting campaign in Massachusetts.
According to a report in the Boston Herald, DraftKings, the current New Jersey market leader, has launched a social media pro-betting campaign and has plans to boost its public relations effort and increase its lobbying activities as the Massachusetts Gaming Commission continues to study sports betting.
In June, shortly after the US Supreme Court had ruled that the decades-old PASPA law forbidding sports betting in 46 US States was unconstitutional and that these 46 states could now decide for themselves whether or not Sports betting should be legalized, Massachusetts Representative Joseph Wagner, chairman of the state House, announced in a TV interview that sports betting would be put on the “front burner” for the early January 2019 legislative session.
In the meantime, he would get his staff to fully investigate sports betting and its pros and cons. This in order to move ahead quickly “but not so quickly that we get it wrong.”
Since Wagner’s announcement, Massachusetts neighbor Rhode Island is pro-betting and the first New England state to legalize sports betting.
It did this in June but as yet no active betting has taken place.
Like Delaware and Nevada who were exempt from PASPA law, Rhode Island’s sports betting will operate via their state lottery. Individual sportsbooks will have to partner – and pay 51 percent of their net revenue.
Connecticut is also looking into sports betting. But appears to be the only other New England state to be doing so.