California’s sports bettors have been given another week in which to sweat the fate of the legislature’s proposed mobile wagering bill.
Late Wednesday, the California state Senate Appropriations Committee canceled its Thursday hearing of Senate Constitutional Amendment 6 (SCA-6), which seeks a November ballot question on whether to authorize land-based and mobile sports betting via tribal casinos and state racetracks. The hearing was canceled “at the request of author” Sen. Bill Dodd.
A hearing on SCA-6 has been rescheduled for Tuesday, and if it receives a favorable vote from the Committee it will head to the Senate floor for a vote. Assuming that vote is positive, SCA-6 would then head to the state Assembly, although the Assembly’s last sitting day ahead of its summer recess is this Friday.
There’s a chance the Assembly might agree to reconvene for the purpose of approving SCA-6 and other bills currently dwelling in the Senate’s ‘Suspense File.’ There are a few other procedural arrows left in the quiver should the Assembly prefer to spend the summer lounging by the pool and avoiding COVID-19.
SCA-6 has other components beyond betting, including allowing the state’s cardrooms to continue operating their ‘player-banked’ card games, which tribal casino operators claim infringe on their monopoly on house-banked games such as blackjack and baccarat.
SCA-6 tries to appease the tribes by allowing them to add dice and roulette games to their slots and cards options, but the tribes also oppose the bill’s mobile betting option, preferring their own plan to restrict betting to in-person at tracks and casinos.
NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY?
As Dodd promised at a separate hearing a few weeks ago, SCA-6 underwent several tweaks this week. These changes include stricter regulation of the cardrooms’ player-banked games, ensuring cardrooms don’t get any additional table games, a moratorium on new cardroom licenses and limits on how cardrooms can market their wares.
Perhaps most crucially, the amended SCA-6 envisions a phased rollout of mobile wagering, starting with on-site mobile wagering at casinos and tracks in 2021. The following year, statewide wagering would be permitted but only after mandatory in-person account registration. By 2023, mobile bettors would be free to both sign up and wager to their hearts content.
TRIBAL REACTION
On Wednesday, California’s tribal gaming operators held a webinar on the betting issue. Collectively, the tribes know that mobile betting is the future but they want to be in the driver’s seat as to how that transition occurs. They view betting as the thin end of the wedge to full-blown online casino gambling, which they believe would threaten their land-based casinos, most of which are based far outside city limits.
The tribes are also seriously put out by the way SCA-6 came to life, having been introduced while the state was in its COVID-19 lockdown. That lockdown prevented the tribes from completing their quest for the signatures needed to get their betting question on November’s ballot and they’re suing the state for more time.
Should the legislature approve SCA-6, the tribes have vowed to flex their political muscle to ensure voters take a dim view of the measure. Expect much of the opposition to focus on the issue of rewarding the card clubs, which have repeatedly found themselves on the wrong end of federal and state spankings due to shoddy attention to anti-money laundering protocols.
