Update on Massachusetts from John Pappas
On 04/28 the Massachusetts Senate passed its version of a sports wagering bill (S2844), nearly a year after the House passed their bill. As we have shared previously, the Senate position on sports betting has been far from industry friendly, and the bill to advance out of Senate on Thursday continues to be problematic and differs greatly from the House-passed bill.
Now the House and Senate will need to come together and negotiate a compromise bill. Given the vast differences in their approaches, and the unwillingness of the Senate to accept any substantive amendments on the floor, indicates that this could be a drawn out negotiation that lasts several weeks, if not months. The bill that the Senate considered is here, but a final engrossed version of the bill after being amended on the Senate floor is not yet available. There is also a letter from the three land-based casinos in Mass seeking improvements to the Senate bill. It is worth noting that several amendments were offered to address these concerns, but they were either withdrawn or rejected by the Senate.
The iDEA team is working on getting more info on the negotiation process and will report back.
Some areas of issue in the Senate-passed bill include:
- Market Access: limits to 1 mobile operation per casino (3) and 6 other licenses (referred to as Category 2) that appear to be untethered, but require some kind of land-based presence for retail and will be competitively bid – no requirement that all 6 are issued.
- Tax Rate: Senate bill is 20 percent for retail betting and 35 percent for mobile (House bill is 12.5 and 15)
- College sport: Senate bill bans wagers on ALL college sports and any amateur athletic events, including the Olympics.
- Credit Card: Senate bill prohibits the use of credit cards for funding accounts and was amended further on 04/28 to ensure that third-party payment methods (paypal, venmo, etc) can not be used for sports wagering if funded via a credit card.
- Ad restrictions: A number of restrictions on advertising (see page 10 of attached bill) including prohibiting ads during broadcast of sporting events and restrictions on promotions.
- RG: requires that customers set self-imposed limits as required by the Commission. As written, it seems to suggest that a customer must set some kind of limits, not simply have the option to create limits. Also imposes a $2,500 lifetime deposit threshold that triggers actions that the player must take to add more money to account.