Nebraska May Lift Ban on In-State College Sports Betting

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00:00But we're going to start today with Nebraska, which, like other states in the United States,

00:06don't have college sports betting on their own team, such as Cornhuskers. But wait, but wait,

00:14there seems to be a possibility that we could see a change there, as I read on Legal Sports Report.

00:19Yeah, I mean, to your point, every state is different, and each state has their own little

00:23nooks and crannies of crazy regulations. Nebraska is certainly no different. It's a state

00:29we don't talk about a lot, Craig. I don't even know if we have, since I've been coming on this

00:33show in the last three years. Nebraska legalized sports betting at the ballot in 2020. The

00:39legislator put it through in 2021, making their regulations. And one of the stipulations to ensure

00:45it had enough votes to pass the legislator was to ban in-state college betting. And I think that's

00:52a huge aspect in Nebraska, because they don't have any professional sports teams. And Nebraska

00:57football, and I never ask basketball now, and volleyball, I mean, it's huge. There's estimates

01:03that, you know, banning in-state college football might make the handle drop. I think it was like

01:0715 percent or something like that. But one could imagine in Nebraska that could be a pretty

01:12significant increase because of how, you know, the sports ecosystem is there. And so this year,

01:20oh, and of note, another note was when they legalized sports betting, it was part of a

01:24bigger casino referendum, which would legalize casino betting. And there was no sports betting

01:31allowed until I think it was 2023 when the first casinos started opening up. And it's only in

01:36person. So it's pretty interesting landscape there. But now we have a bill to kind of lift that ban

01:42on in-state college betting. So Nebraskans might be able to bet on Cornhusker football soon. Again,

01:47that's only in person. Last year, there was a late bill and a special session to help reduce property

01:53taxes. I think that's probably the last time we talked about Nebraska here. And they included

01:58online sports betting expansion. It didn't make any moves really during the special session,

02:04but Governor Jim Pillen came out and said he wants a priority bill filed this month or back then,

02:09he said in January for the session, a priority bill kind of gets action no matter what.

02:16And that hasn't been filed yet, but I think that we will see a bill soon with priority kind of

02:22designation to expand into online sports betting in Nebraska. So Nebraska might be a kind of a fun

02:28state to watch this session that maybe a lot of people weren't paying attention to, but

02:32certainly some rules that are potentially going to change and then potentially a fairly

02:36significant expansion there to go online from there for in-person casinos.