Alabama Sports Betting Bill Progress: Optimism Wanes in Senate

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00:00 It feels like maybe four months ago or so you and I spoke about it.

00:08 We were thinking maybe like Alabama, for instance, might actually get their act together and

00:15 get something done before long.

00:17 And are we close now with Alabama getting it done?

00:21 Yeah.

00:22 So yeah, heading into the new year, I mean, you look at a map of legal sports betting

00:27 states.

00:28 There's a lot of people down there in the Southeast, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina,

00:33 Mississippi only has retail sports betting.

00:35 And so yeah, it's kind of when are these states going to get it together?

00:39 And it looked heading into the session that Alabama was going to do this.

00:43 And there's still certainly a chance that they do.

00:46 But you know, it's always started in the Senate and occasionally has passed the Senate and

00:50 gone to the House and the House vote, you know, it dies in the House.

00:53 Well, this year, House leadership took it by the reins and and led a sports betting

00:59 bill, a comprehensive gaming bill all the way through the House very quickly within

01:03 like two weeks of the session starting up.

01:06 And so that left a lot of people really optimistic about this.

01:09 And you know, the senator who has been the lead sponsor the last couple of years before

01:14 the session told me, you know, if they get it into the Senate, I'll get it through.

01:17 I'm confident we have the votes.

01:19 Well, last week after this happened, now he's simply optimistic that he's going to

01:24 get the votes.

01:25 There's been some new wrinkles that have emerged on the side of the bill, not not necessarily

01:33 anything to do specifically with the gaming bill, but maybe where the funds go or or just

01:37 the general opposition that you see on either side of the aisle.

01:42 And so this is a little bit less optimistic I am than I was, you know, right when it passed

01:48 the House when I thought, well, hey, you know, the Senate's done it before and the House

01:52 has done now gotten their piece of the puzzle done.

01:55 So we'll see where it goes.

01:56 I've got a couple sources telling me they're still happy with where it is.

02:01 You know, they're kind of thinking that maybe they dropped the casino package part of it

02:07 because there's, you know, seven casinos that could be legalized as part of the package

02:10 and you get the lottery because they're one of five states that don't have a lottery and

02:15 sports betting gets, you know, maybe lottery and sports betting get get shoveled through

02:19 still.

02:20 And that's just kind of where we're at is we're kind of seeing where the Senate irons

02:26 out these wrinkles and if anything happens and if they get it done, it could put some

02:31 pressure on Georgia, which is kind of, again, another state we're looking at to kind of

02:35 get things together because of that big hole in the southeast.

02:39 And right now it kind of looks like we're shaping up for a very similar end in Georgia,

02:43 where sports betting ends up kind of being a proxy war for other issues between the Republicans

02:48 and Democrats and it might die because of this this proxy war.

02:52 Again, who knows actually what happens.

02:55 This is, you know, politics at the state level are pretty much unpredictable no matter what

03:00 something can look like 100% shoe in and it falls apart because of some random thing that

03:05 happens behind the scenes.

03:08 But again, Alabama has made a step it hasn't before passing the house.

03:12 So there is certainly lots of optimism still out there that they can get it the last, you

03:16 know, 10 yards or or however you want to look at it on a football field.

03:20 Yeah.

03:20 (upbeat music)

03:22 [MUSIC]

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