What’s next for sports betting in California?

By Dan Walters

In the principle, those that promote California poll measures determine some downside — actual or imagined — and try to steer voters that their proposals would resolve it.

Propositions 26 and 27, nonetheless, sharply diverge from that sample. As a substitute, they need California voters to create new methods to waste their cash by wagering on sports activities occasions.

There’s no grassroots clamor for such alternatives. If there’s any enthusiastic constituency for betting on sports activities it’s most likely younger males, who’re the chief patrons of on-line fantasy sports activities video games.

The weak demand for sports activities playing, plus the uber-confusing saturation adverts for and towards the 2 measures explains why each are nearly sure to be rejected within the Nov. 8 election.

Final week, the Public Coverage Institute of California launched a brand new statewide ballot that discovered simply 34% of possible voters favor Proposition 26 whereas even fewer, 26%, would vote for Proposition 27.

The polling confirmed that if there may be any constituency for sports activities wagering, it’s younger adults — however they’re additionally among the many demographic subgroups least more likely to solid ballots.

Sensing that it had no likelihood of passage, the web betting companies that sponsor Proposition 27 started scaling again their marketing campaign a number of weeks in the past. Taking no possibilities, the casino-owning Indian tribes that positioned Proposition 26 on the poll are nonetheless operating anti-Proposition 27 spots, however the lack of an efficient pro-Proposition 26 marketing campaign seems to doom it as nicely.

So, assuming each are rejected after greater than a half-billion {dollars} having been spent on dropping campaigns, what occurs subsequent?

A short assessment of what occurred earlier than this yr’s high-dollar campaigns is likely to be instructive.

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court docket invalidated legal guidelines that prohibited sports activities wagering and since then 35 states have legalized it in some kind. Naturally, the companies that promoted it in different states solid their eye on California, the nation’s most populous state and due to this fact its largest potential market.

Some efforts had been made within the Legislature, however the casino-owning tribes, which now have a near-monopoly on authorized playing within the state, adamantly opposed having anybody else acquire entry to gamblers’ wallets.

With legislative efforts going nowhere, the tribes proposed an initiative that ultimately grew to become Proposition 26, requiring sports activities bets to be made personally of their casinos or at 4 designated horse racing tracks.

The net wagering companies, led by FanDuel and DraftKings, then sponsored a rival measure which grew to become Proposition 27, permitting bets to be positioned through pc or cellphone.

Some tribes briefly floated a 3rd measure that will permit on-line betting they managed, however that was dropped in favor of concentrating sources on defeating Proposition 27.

Rejection of the 2 measures would return the scenario again to the place it was a number of years in the past. The legislative route could also be reactivated, but it surely’s tough to see a pathway to success so long as on line casino tribes insist on sustaining their monopoly.

Nevertheless, the problem is not going to merely go away as a result of sports activities wagering in California is probably a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, so it’s fully potential, and even possible, that new measures will likely be proposed for the 2024 poll.

The tribes would most likely dump the in-person wagering idea of Proposition 26 and search a monopoly on on-line betting, much like this yr’s short-lived measure. It’s additionally possible that the on line casino tribes would search some lodging with rural tribes that don’t have casinos and would have benefited from Proposition 27.

Given the potential California market, any tribal measure would most likely generate one other company effort as nicely. In different phrases, we could also be subjected to competing campaigns over again.

Initially printed in CalMatters