Sports Wagering Evil at Online Casinos, Salvation for Delaware
The Delaware Video Lottery Advisory Council will recommend sports gambling as its top priority to protect state gambling revenues in its report to the state legislature next month. Delaware officials are concerned that the recent passage of Maryland laws to allow slots at horse racing tracks will have a significant negative impact on state gambling taxes.
Delaware is permitted to legalize sports gambling because the state, along with Montana, Nevada, and Oregon, was grandfathered in when Congress passed a federal law in 1992 making sports betting illegal. Those states were allowed exceptions because each had at the time or in the past allowed legal sports wagering.
The president and CEO of Dover Downs, Ed Sutor, said the state economy needed all the revenue gambling had been providing, and with the new competition in Maryland and Pennsylvania, sports gambling may give the state the edge it needs to keep revenues at current levels.
The council is also recommending the legalization of casino table games, saying that not only tax revenue would be created, but hundreds of new jobs would be available in a time of rising unemployment.
Still, observers wonder why sports gambling would be the saving grace for Delaware's tax situation, but is treated like the plague by federal authorities. Of all the forms of Internet gambling, sports betting has been the most reviled. Even measures like Pete Session's bill legalizing most online casino games exempts sports wagering.
A neighborhood bookie who wished to remain anonymous said, "It's all about the NFL lobbying to keep online gambling on sports illegal. Meanwhile, i have hundreds of players who don't miss a play of an NFL game, but if there was no betting... well, there would be no viewers, either. People bet, anyway. Congress is just missing a chance to tax all those bets."
