Delaware Legislature Rejects Sports Betting Lottery
Governor Jack Markell's plan to return sports betting to Delaware reached an abrupt halt yesterday as lawmakers defeated the bill. The state House failed by two votes to reach the sixty percent margin needed to pass the sports gambling proposal.
Delaware is allowed to consider legal sports betting despite a federal law against gambling on professional or amateur sporting events. The statute gives Delaware and three other state, Nevada, Montana, and Oregon, the right to run sports betting games because they had previously done so before the federal ban was established in 1992.
Markell had told supporters that allowing the lottery to run sports wagering could bring $55 million in annual revenue. The move was proposed to help prevent revenue decline, as Delaware tracks will face increased competition from Maryland tracks, which are installing slots.
But the bill also included increasing the tax on existing Delaware slots, and all three tracks were against the bill. Patti Key, CEO of Harrington Raceway, told the Wilmington News-Journal that the sports betting would not come close to replacing the extra $3.2 million the track would pay.
Legislators voted twenty-three in favor, fifteen against, with three abstaining. The defeat is blamed by supporters of the bill on campaigning by the NFL and NCAA, which both issued threatening remarks concerning if the bill passed.
