Californians will head to the ballot box in November to decide the fate of sports betting in the state. Voters will have two options to choose from, as two propositions, Prop 26 and Prop 27 have qualified for the ballot. One would legalize sports betting via tribal casinos and horseracing venues. The other would bring mobile betting to California.
Props.com spoke with Brandt Iden, Sportradar Head of Government Affairs, US, to get his thoughts on the Golden State’s sports betting prospects, and what to expect in November.
Will California Sports Betting Pass In 2022?
Steve Ruddock: Looking ahead to November, we have California sports betting, and that seems to be going pretty much exactly as everybody expected, with a lot of negative campaigning. Do you see either of those measures, picking up enough support that they might pass? I would give the tribal initiative a slightly better chance, but both will need some luck to pass.
Brandt Iden: I would agree with your assessment. I would also say that typically, and I still believe that this holds true whenever there are competing ballot proposals, statistically, they both have a tendency to go down and it’s because of all that negative campaigning that goes on.
And I don’t know if you saw this, but recently it got real ugly in California where it’s pitting the smaller tribes versus the larger tribes and the smaller tribes are saying, ‘you know, we are disenfranchised by these larger tribes that collect all this gaming revenue and we want to have access to that. And we don’t get that now because we’re being pushed out of the marketplace by these larger tribes.’
That’s tough, that’s getting into real sort of personal tribal politics. And we’re only in August, it’s only going to get dirtier. And I mean that in terms of campaign talk… politically. As we get closer to November there’s going to be more mudslinging. The ads are going to start to ramp up. Both sides are going to spend unlimited amounts of money. I think it’s going to be a tough, tough campaign. And typically, when voters see all that negativity on both sides of the issue, it’s like, what do we believe? We just don’t know what to believe at this point in time, so I take a step back and I go, I’m probably going to vote no on both as much as I like sports betting. I just don’t know what to do here.
I think that, unfortunately, means a failure of both proposals. Now, there is one caveat to that, and this is really important, that since PASPA has been overturned we haven’t seen a ballot initiative fail on sports betting. But we’ve never seen two competing proposals either. So, it’s a really unique situation and difficult to handicap. I am hedging a little bit here, but I will tell you that statistically speaking, they both fail.
Will The Tribes (And Other Entities) Get Involved?
Steve Ruddock: I think we foreshadowed this in our last conversation, which is, will the commercial operators be able to bring in some of these smaller tribes to almost act as a proxy in this ongoing advertising war that they’re having. Do you think the situation is these smaller tribes see a great opportunity to suddenly become gaming tribes? These smaller tribes in California in these far-flung locations that aren’t conducive to operating a casino, is online their path to becoming gaming tribes through partnerships?
Brandt Iden: Oh, a hundred percent. I do. The example that I will use is Bay Mills in the upper peninsula in Michigan. They partnered with DraftKings and that’s been huge for that tribe, and it’s the same sort of situation. It’s in a remote location, I mean, from where I live in Michigan it’s about six or seven hours north, almost to Canada, it’s in a very rural part of the state. They don’t get a tremendous amount of foot traffic. And when they do, it’s only for a limited period in the summer when it’s really nice.
So, being able to partner with a commercial operator was huge for them. And I think a lot of these smaller tribes in California are seeing that as one of the examples of success and saying, ‘you know, we would like to partake in this and have some economic activity and some dollars come in from gaming that we don’t get otherwise.’
So, I think you may see more of these smaller tribes get involved in this at some point in time. And I don’t think by the way, in setting the tribes aside, we’re done seeing entities getting involved. You’ve got unions and now we have this litigation going on with the NAACP and whether or not they took a position on this issue. I think this is only going to continue to unfold. And I think these groups that get involved politically will start to take more solidified positions as we get closer to election day.