Regulators give the nod to casinos for sports betting
Photo | Courtesy
Encore Boston Harbor in Everett
The reports came from Plainville, Springfield and Everett early on Monday afternoon: the state's three casino-style gambling centers look ready to go for the 10 a.m. Tuesday start of legal in-person sports betting in Massachusetts.
Three members of the Gaming Commission fanned out across the state Monday to observe the "soft launch" of legal sports wagering at Plainridge Park Casino, MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor. The regulators toured the facilities, inspected betting areas, and in some cases placed mock bets to ensure that things were functioning in keeping with the state's betting law and the commission's regulations.
After their respective walk-throughs, the commissioners linked up for a virtual meeting to share their observations and, ultimately, to give each property the final go-ahead to begin taking bets Tuesday.
At Plainridge, Commissioner Jordan Maynard said he had no concerns after touring the Plainville slots parlor and getting an in-depth presentation on its betting kiosks.
"It looks to me at this point ... that PPC was in really, really solid shape," he said.
Commissioner Brad Hill reported that the test bets he observed at MGM Springfield "went very, very well" and that he was "very happy with the messaging that MGM has set up for responsible gaming."
Reporting from a parking lot outside Encore Boston Harbor, Commissioner Eileen O'Brien said that "in terms of what I saw on my end, everything was was fine. It was good to go."
The commission was set to approve certificates of operations for Plainridge and MGM Springfield shortly after noon, but the meeting was put on hold until 5 p.m. because Encore had "some corrections and additions and things they needed to do their internal controls before we could sign off on them," Executive Director Karen Wells said. The extra time also allowed the commission to confirm that the properties are set up to withhold unpaid child support or state taxes from winnings as required by law.
Both matters had been resolved, Wells said, by the time the commission reconvened its meeting just after 5 p.m. And the commissioners wasted no time, voting 4-0 around 5:15 p.m. to award each facility a certificate of operations. Commissioner Nakisha Skinner was absent from the meeting.
"Thank you to everybody that got us -- and I say to the other side knowing that we're really not quite to the other side until we get to March -- but this was sort of the biggest peak to get over. So thank you to everybody involved at the properties and for our staff," O'Brien said.
Members of the Gaming Commission are planning to be at MGM Springfield for the 10 a.m. launch of sports betting, then will travel to Plainridge Park Casino for an early afternoon celebration and will round out their day with a stop at Encore, Chairwoman Cathy Judd-Stein said Monday.
Gov. Maura Healey, who made her opposition to casinos a key part of her first run for public office and supported the unsuccessful 2014 ballot question repealing the state's casino gambling law, did not give voice to her previous concerns about gambling when asked Monday afternoon about the impending start of legal sports betting.
"Looking forward to implementation, looking forward to more revenue," Healey said.
Estimates for annual state tax revenue from sports wagering have ranged from about $35 million to as high as $70 million once both in-person and mobile betting are fully operational. Based on monthly averages since all three casinos have been open, Massachusetts is on pace for roughly $285 million in annual revenue from casino-style gambling.
Researchers from the Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts (SEIGMA) project at UMass Amherst reported to the Gaming Commission in September that an estimated 13 to 20 percent (and rising) of the Massachusetts population bets on sports. That rate, the SEIGMA team said, "is very similar to the prevalence rate in other states where sports betting has been legally operational for several years."
And it also is not expected to grow by leaps and bounds; the researchers concluded that "only a small portion of the population currently participates or ever will participate in sports betting."
Sports betting is most popular among young, well-educated men and the researchers found that "problem and at-risk gambling is significantly higher among sports bettors, including in Massachusetts," though it was not clear that sports betting itself is a riskier activity than other forms of gambling.
And because the number of people who will place bets on sports is relatively small, the SEIGMA team said it expects that the higher rates of problem gambling among sports bettors "will have a fairly minor overall effect on problem gambling rates for the entire population" of Massachusetts.
The report attributed the "significant association between sports betting and problem gambling" mainly to two factors: the enthusiasm generated by sports wagering being the newest form of legalized gaming and the fact that "sports bettors tend to be involved in many different types of gambling, and it is their heavy gambling involvement that is primarily responsible for higher rates of problem gambling."
The SEIGMA report concluded that maximizing revenue from sports betting "requires having a variety of different online operators; may also require some land-based options; and is not contingent on having collegiate sports betting."
That's basically the structure that the Massachusetts Legislature agreed to in August. The state's wagering law allows for in-person betting at the state's casinos, slots parlor and horse racing simulcast centers, mobile/online betting through more than a dozen possible platforms, and does not allow wagers on Massachusetts college athletics unless the team is playing in a tournament.
The licensing process for simulcast centers is on hold for the time being, but the Gaming Commission has cleared the three existing casino-gaming facilities, five mobile platforms that will operate in conjunction with the brick-and-mortar licensees, and six "untethered" mobile betting platforms.
Operators will pay a 15 percent tax on their revenue from wagers placed in person and a 20 percent tax on revenue from mobile or online betting. The great bulk of the betting activity is expected to take place through mobile platforms; an analyst who briefed the Gaming Commission last year that that in-person betting is generally between 5 percent and 15 percent of the overall market.
Mobile betting is expected to get going in "early March," in time for the NCAA basketball tournament.
But the SEIGMA team highlighted that sports betting revenue maximization is not the same as maximizing the economic benefits to the state.
"The fundamental economic problem with legal sports betting in the Commonwealth is that almost all the patronage and revenue will come from Massachusetts residents. Thus, sports betting can only have limited net economic benefit for the Massachusetts economy as it will primarily only be redistributing money that already exists within the economy," the report said.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments