Skip to playerSkip to main contentSkip to footer
  • 5/1/2025
Transcript
00:00the state of hawaii they tricked us pat for a couple weeks got all this good news hey maybe
00:06sports betting coming to hawaii governors mayors saying hey let's bring it on then they bring it in
00:11front of the house and it's like nope we're not doing it what happened well yeah so basically we
00:19entered the session and there was no expectations for hawaii it's one of two states without any
00:23any form of gambling with utah and you know in the past sports betting legislation has gotten
00:30maybe passed a committee and i think that happened one other time and then besides that it just kind
00:35of stalled out as soon as it was introduced well this year it got through multiple committees on
00:39in the house and then passed the house then went to the senate passed multiple senate committees then
00:46passed the senate now what happened was in the initial house discussion on representative daniel
00:53holtz bill uh there was a proposed 10 sports betting tax and a 250 000 license fee and that was kind of
01:03a point of contention for some lawmakers and they said you know what let's strip these out that those
01:08might be a little too low we we should send this forward and just keep discussing this well as soon
01:14as it got to the senate and before it went to the senate floor they reintroduced those exact figures
01:21figuring okay well they don't have the figures and we might as well put theirs back in okay let's pass
01:26it as a full senate and send it back to the house well the house said wait a second we removed those
01:31and so they did not concur to the amendment it went to a conference committee and there was not uh no
01:39agreement was being was able to be made before uh of deadline of last friday and it because of that
01:47it's dead for the year which is wild because it did it made so much progress so much surprising progress
01:52it was you know definitely a cinderella story that seemed too good to be true and ultimately it was
01:57uh because you know even as it was going to the conference committee governor josh green said
02:02hey i'm for this it looks like we've got okay protections in place let's go ahead and do this let's
02:08bring something that's already happening in the shadows let's bring it into the light
02:12and use it to make some money for the state um but yeah so a lot of progress clearly was made this
02:18year even if it didn't get to the finish line so i think we'll go ahead and look at maybe even a couple
02:23more proposals aside from representative holtz because he's been the champion the past couple of
02:28years with proposals and so we'll see that a work group was also started in the legislator this year so
02:34they're going to look at legalizing gambling there's other issues you know we've had there there was a
02:39casino bill of maybe putting up a casino in honolulu and so there's going to be a work group
02:43that kind of studies it maybe better informs an effort next year with maybe a you know agreed upon
02:48tax rate and license fee and maybe it gets off to an even stronger start next year so i think you know
02:54well it is a disappointment that maybe hawaii for the industry and even nebraska as we talked about last
02:59week which also faltered uh for 2025 2026 could could be a decent year for a couple of these states that
03:06you know otherwise we were kind of shaking our head at saying that might never happen

Recommended