The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
A sports betting compromise that might pay off
Connecticut missed the Super Bowl at the betting window and we’ll miss March Madness. But the state may be inching closer to online and in-person sports betting.
All that’s needed is a tiny bit of compromise. Oh wait, that’s all we’ve needed for years now, as the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes insist they and they alone hold the rights to take wagers on ballgames.
In the latest compromise plan in the General Assembly, five entities would control sports betting in Connecticut: both tribes separately, as competitors; the tribes together in the unlikely event they jointly build a casino in East Windsor or someplace else; Sportech plc, which operates the 14 off-track betting locations in the state; and the Connecticut Lottery.
That’s the idea from Rep. Joe Verrengia, D-West Hartford, co-chairman of the legislature’s public safety committee, which oversees gambling. Public safety will hear from the companies in a forum at the legislative office building at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
The idea makes sense, in that it allows companies already in the state, with on-the-ground investments, to jump into the sports book. That’s what New Jersey did, more or less, with ten purveyors, mostly commercial casino companies that were already there.
There’s not much money in it for the state coffers. Maybe $20 million, Verrengia said, and that could be optimistic, since New Jersey, the East Coat mecca of sports wagering, took in just $36 million on a total handle of $4.5 billion last year, according to legalsportsreport.com.
Sports betting is a very low-margin business. The goal is not a big payday for the taxpayers, but a hand to the gaming companies here, to help them keep their customers.
It also makes sense for Connecticut to do something, anything, to advance the gaming industry in the state. Not that more gambling is what we need, but it’s here and the companies doing it are looking to serve the market.
“If the state is going to move their sports betting policy forward, this is the best bet,” Verrengia said Monday. “It is an effort to work with our tribal friends to reach a middle ground.”
It’s a middle ground because on the one hand, we have the tribes, so far refusing to share sports betting with anyone else in Connecticut. They — especially the Pequots, who own Foxwoods Resort — claim sports bets are a “casino game” under the 1990s-era, permanent compacts with the state, which give the state 25 percent of slot machine revenue in exchange for exclusive casino rights.
There’s no progress at the negotiating table, certainly nothing we can talk about.
And on the other hand, we have commercial casinos pushing on the door into Connecticut. Chief among them is MGM Resorts International, which already sued the state and the federal government over a license for the two tribes to open a commercial casino in East Windsor, without opening that license to all bidders.
Verrengia has agreed with MGM until now, that the state should open up sports betting to outside bidders along with the companies already here. But he said Monday, “I don’t believe that there is the political will to do that at this time, to open it up.”
So in this version, the commercial casino companies are out. It seems clear that no one wants to build a new casino anyplace in Connecticut, including Bridgeport, so we might as well focus narrowly on sports betting.
Keeping MGM out is fine with Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague. Her district includes the tribal casinos and her bills, every year and again this year, hand all rights to those tribes. Her latest plan, also on the table now, includes the exclusive right for the tribes to open a casino in Bridgeport — a very small one, if they want — and operate online gaming and sports betting jointly with no competitors.
Would Osten, Senate chairwoman of the powerful appropriations committee, support Verrengia’s compromise? “I have my bill out there which shows where the money would go to, and until I see something from Joe,” she said, “I’m not even commenting on his bill…His is not fleshed out, it’s not written yet.”
Verrengia said he’ll file his bill on behalf of the public safety committee by Friday, after hearing from the gaming executives Tuesday.
Osten’s bill, as a political and financial sweetener, would send an extra $88 million to cities and towns, including $50 million from the East Windsor casino that will probably never happen and $13 million from sports betting.
She’s skeptical of extending sports betting to the Lottery Corp., both because she’s not sure we want sports betting in convenience stores and because of recent management problems there. She’s absolutely right to be skeptical, and there’s no good reason to bring in the lottery other than the legal idea of opening sports betting to anyone who’s already here and no one else.
The state should welcome Sportech into the action. The Canadian company, with its U.S. headquarters in New Haven, has 400 people in Connecticut and a nationwide business creating technology for horse tracks.
“We think there’s enough room and enough business and we’d like to see it happen,” said Ted Taylor, president of Sportech’s venues business. “If you take the two tribes and Sportech and the Lottery, I think that creates enough competition.”
Having enough competition matters and is a matter of balance. With too many providers, no one can make a go of it. With too few, the popular mobile apps, especially for in-game action, like who will score the next touchdown, can’t be robust.
MGM didn’t offer a comment on whether the Las Vegas company would try to block Verrengia’s latest idea.
Rodney Butler, chairman of MPTN, said in an email through a spokeswoman, “We have collaborated well with Rep. Verrengia in the past, but have not seen this bill to comment. However, are working diligently with legislative leadership and the governor’s office on a broader, bipartisan compromise that modernizes the state’s gaming economy and can provide muchneeded revenue to the deserving cities and towns of Connecticut.”
We’ll see what that means soon enough, but not in time to place any bets in 2020.