California Pulls Sports Betting Bill After Tribal Opposition

(Bloomberg) -- California Senator Bill Dodd, a sponsor of the legislation that would legalize sports betting in the nation’s most-populous state, said he was pulling the bill because of opposition from tribal-casino operators.

The law would have allowed sports betting in the state’s tribal casinos and racetracks, but not in card rooms, which offer poker and other games. Tribes opposed the bill because it also created a constitutional right for card rooms to offer games such as blackjack.

“We have significantly diverse stakeholders that really want to be in here,” Dodd said in an interview. “Tribes, county fairs, horse racing, card rooms. Because of Covid we couldn’t bring people together.”

The legislation, which ultimately needs to be approved by voters, would have had to have passed by Thursday for it to be included in a November ballot initiative. The setback means the earliest the law could now go before voters is November 2022, meaning that California won’t be able to implement sports betting until 2023 at the earliest, according to Assemblyman Adam Gray, another sponsor of the legislation.

A spokesman for the California Nations Indian Gaming Association didn’t immediately have a comment on the termination of the bill.

The Coalition to Authorize Regulated Sports Wagering, a tribal-led group that is gathering signatures for its own ballot measure to legalize sports betting, said the bill would’ve broken an agreement between the states and tribes by expanding Nevada-style games to card rooms.

The Coalition said in an email it had more than 1 million signatures for a petition to legalize sports wagering at racetracks and tribal casinos “in a responsible and incremental manner.”

The Dodd bill would have imposed a tax of 10% on gross revenue from wagers placed at tribal casinos and horse-racing tracks, and 15% from online wagers. Its backers estimated it would bring in $500 million a year.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to approve such wagering in 2018, sports betting has taken off like wildfire in the U.S., creating a potentially multibillion-dollar market for operators from Caesar Entertainment Corp. to William Hill Plc. DraftKings Inc., a sports wagering company that went public earlier this year, fell 3.3% to $40.62 on the news.

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