Minnesota's Ongoing Battle to Legalize Sports Betting

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00:00If it's not Missouri, maybe it's Minnesota, although we've been waiting on Minnesota to

00:08have this done now for a couple of years.

00:12And boy, are we doom and gloom today, Pat, because I think that we're going to be talking

00:15about Minnesota coming up short again too.

00:18You know, it's a good question.

00:19Again, the past two years I've come on this show and said, I think it's a pretty good

00:23chance that Minnesota legalizes, and then they didn't.

00:28It's a very complicated state, as we've detailed many times, you know, you need as in any state,

00:33you need bipartisan support across the aisle to legalize sports betting because there's,

00:38you know, naysayers on both sides who don't like gambling issues.

00:42I talked to one of the leading representatives who's a sponsor of the bill recently, and,

00:48you know, he kind of just kind of laid out what's happening.

00:50He said that we weren't as close as maybe some media suggested at the end of this last

00:56session.

00:57You know, we had heard there was a deal on the doorstep and it was done.

01:00But he said, you know, I know there were multiple people who didn't want it done.

01:04I don't know why.

01:05I don't have the answers, but we're going to continue to work to make sure it happens.

01:09It seems like the tribes are still on board.

01:11You know, there's huge questions about the election this year.

01:16One is the, you know, elephant in the room of Tim Walz, a vice presidential nominee and,

01:22you know, could be in the White House come January when the session starts and that

01:26changes things a little bit because you get some Minnesota Senate changes.

01:31So you might have a couple special elections that could sway the Senate back from being

01:37Democrat farmer labor controlled to Republican, which would throw in some wrenches when it

01:42comes to the tribal stuff.

01:43The tribes want to get this done while Walz or this DFL gubernatorial office isn't involved

01:50because they want to have exclusivity.

01:53Now, the sponsor told me, you know, the tribes, if the Republicans take control of any of

01:57the chambers or whatever, they could launch sports betting on their own if they wanted

02:01to.

02:02But then the Republicans could go ahead and open it to the horse racing tracks and card

02:06rooms that we've talked about, want a piece of it, but, you know, have only been getting

02:10a little bit of revenue share from this.

02:12Right.

02:13So there's a lot of little tiny moving parts here that, you know, the election can change

02:17things.

02:18They can at any point say, well, we don't like the way we're doing this.

02:22So the Republicans can dig in their feet, which it seems like they have in the past

02:26because they don't like the pieces they're getting for the horse racing tracks.

02:32What was of notice, all the all the representatives are up for reelection this year.

02:37So this representative told me he's knocking on doors in the suburbs and he said there's

02:39one issue, well, two issues, actually, that every suburban male talks about.

02:46One is sports betting and one is net neutrality.

02:49He says it doesn't matter.

02:50The party Republican Democrat doesn't matter.

02:52They want sports betting.

02:54And he thinks that that could be a big movement for some of these, you know, politicians who

02:59are out there trying to get votes.

03:00If they're hearing this from a lot of people, you know, maybe it does sway a few more voters

03:04to the to the positive.

03:07But yeah, we're just at a weird time in this industry right now where and we'll talk about

03:12it in a second.

03:13We're kind of pivoting online casino because a lot of the low hanging fruit is gone.

03:16You know, we've got Minnesota that that could get done.

03:19We have Missouri that could get done.

03:20We just saw Nebraska kind of fall short.

03:23They could get get it done early next year.

03:25But that again would be till 2026.

03:27Georgia, Mass, you know, there's all these states that could get it done.

03:31But there's so many roadblocks in the way that now, you know, we're just in a really

03:35weird spot in terms of terms of U.S. sports betting expansion.

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