California has the potential to be the largest legalised sports betting market in the country with an estimated $60bn in wagers and revenue of $3bn annually. Sports betting has been a long running saga with two competing interests namely out of state online sports books and California tribal organisations at logger heads over the issue. In California Proposition 26 led primarily by card rooms would have allowed casinos and race tracks to offer sports betting in person. Tis had the backing of a coalition of tribes and would also have allowed roulette and dice games at casinos.
Proposition 27 would have allowed online and mobile sports betting and was backed by DraftKings, BetMGM and FanDuel. Large gaming companies would have had to partner with a tribe involved in gambling or tribes could have entered the market on their own. Both propositions were heavily voted down at the ballot box in November 2022.
However, we are bound to see more attempts to get sports betting off the ground. We have already witnessed one attempt fail this year. Two Californian sports betting ballot proposals proposed by Eagle 1 Acquisition Co, a group of backers for a proposition to legalise sports betting in the state, would have granted tribes
California has the potential to be the largest legalised sports betting
market in the country with an estimated $60bn in wagers and revenue of $3bn annually. Sports
betting has been a long-running saga with two competing interests namely out of state online sports books and California tribal organisations
at logger heads over the issue.
exclusive rights to offer retail and online betting. However they failed to consult with Te California Nations Indian Gaming Association.
Despite amendments which set out more favourable terms to the tribes it has been so unpopular that Te Sports betting Alliance (SBA) a coalition comprising major North American sports betting operators, including FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, and Fanatics, even gave its support to the California Indian tribes in their opposition to the initiative. Both ballot proposals were abandoned in January.
Te odds of other attempts being made to legalise sports gambling in California are high but it could be some time before another initiative gets off the ground. California is the nation's largest Indian gaming state in the nation with total revenues of $9bn annually. Consequently tribal gaming interests will play a defining role in if and how sports betting is regulated.
In Texas change looks unlikely in the near future too. As is the case in California for sports betting to go ahead the government would have to first make a change to the constitution which would need a ballot. Meanwhile an estimated one million Texans already bet on sports each year via unlicensed channels according to some estimates. A number of bills have been put forward by lawmakers since PASPA was overturned.
Two complementary bills which combined would have permitted mobile sports betting. House Joint Resolution 102 and House Bill 1942, were approved by the Texas House of Representatives. However the bill was effectively killed off by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick who announced that he wouldn’t refer HB 1942 or HJR 102 to the Senate without “overwhelming GOP support,” meaning that the bill did not go before senators before it adjourned in May. Te state Legislature is not in regular session in 2024 so we are not going to see legalised gambling in the state this year.
Meanwhile, the road to legalisation for America’s third most populous state Florida has been less than smooth. Floridians were only able to place legal sports bets on the
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