Hold your bets
Spilka taking ‘wait to see’ stance on sports betting
March Madness betting pools are coming together and would-be bettors in Massachusetts will once again be on the sidelines as other states grab a stake of the wagering due to laws legalizing sports betting.
The state Senate last session was an unwilling partner to the House, which was ready to make the move and legalize sports wagering. In the new session, Senate President Karen Spilka, who opposed a 2010 casino law before supporting a different version in 2011, is taking a wait-and-see approach to the issue.
During a recent interview on Bloomberg Radio, Spilka declined to stake out a position on the bill — “I will wait to see what kind of bill we end up with.”
But she also said she hoped that if lawmakers agree to legalize sports betting they will pass legislation that might serve as a “national model.”
Spilka opposed a casino legalization bill that cleared the Senate 25-15 in 2010 but died in a dispute with former Gov. Deval Patrick. In 2011, she played a lead role in developing a redrafted bill that dropped a racetrack slots carveout and became law after it was approved in the Senate that year on a 2710 vote.
“While I did not vote for casino gambling — full disclosure I am not a gambler — the bill that we ultimately passed, which I was one or two senators to have a lead role in developing that bill, the one that we finally passed serves still as a national model,” Spilka said. “And if we do go down the road of authorizing sports betting, I’d like to be able to say the same thing for that bill, as well.”
Spilka declined in the interview with Bloomberg Baystate Business to stake out a position on current legislation or a plan by Sen. Jaime Eldridge to prevent sports wagering at casinos.
“There will be a lot of discussion,” Spilka said. “I know a lot of members have had various ideas and thoughts about it, whether to do it or not do it, or how to do it. So there will be a lot of debate and discussion about it.”
Last month, Sen. Eric Lesser, the point person on sports wagering in that branch, outlined a proposal that would put sports betting under the auspices of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission and create three distinct sports betting license types to allow betting at casinos and the slots parlor, at live horse racing tracks or simulcast centers, and through mobile or online platforms. A schedule for taking up the issues has not been set yet.
“If done correctly, the idea here is to bring sports betting into the daylight, legalize it and, in a real-time way, monitor it so that potential violations or problems can be quickly identified and dealt with,” Lesser said at the time. The Longmeadow Democrat chairs the Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies.
Gov. Charlie Baker refiled legislation this year to expand sports wagering in the state and his budget assumes about $35 million in revenue from sports bets.