Will Minnesota be the Next State to Legalize Sports Betting?

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00:03 >> Now the close call that Minnesota had to legalizing sports betting a little bit

00:07 over a year ago, year and a half ago, now seems to be back in the next session to

00:12 try to get that state up and running and going. And I guess the question is, Pat,

00:17 do you think that they will have any success? And could Minnesota, in fact, be

00:21 the state that gets legalized this year?

00:26 >> I still give Minnesota, you know, they're definitely up there in terms of

00:31 chances. Mississippi might be the best. It seems like a shoe-in at this point. All

00:35 they're doing is expanding to online. They, of course, already have sports betting.

00:39 So Minnesota, I do think, has the best chance still. And that's because they're

00:44 starting the session, which started this week, over the 50-yard line. You know,

00:48 they got pretty far last year in both the House and the Senate, and the bills kind

00:53 of are taking back up where they left off. And, of course, there's another bill

00:58 that's starting from Senate Minority Leader Jeremy Miller that also kind of puts a

01:03 different spin on it. The problem there is, of course, the Republicans, which is

01:07 Miller's party, wants to include the horse racing tracks. And the Democrat Farmer

01:13 Labor Party wants to give the tribes exclusivity because they control gaming, and

01:18 they've shut down, you know, the whole shebang because of their ties to the

01:23 politics in the state. And that's where we're left off, is there's a middle ground

01:28 that there is kind of a tug-of-war between the tribes and the tracks. The tracks, of

01:32 course, want full participation, full online licenses. The tribes don't, but they

01:37 have relented, and we left off last session with negotiations for a fee of sorts that

01:44 the tribes would pay the tracks to give them exclusivity. And that's where we left

01:50 off. And, you know, from all points, the negotiations were ongoing throughout the

01:56 off-season, if you will. We'll see where it picks up at this point. You know, we'll

02:03 probably get some committee hearings in the next week or two and see if we get

02:08 updates from there. I'm talking to sources trying to figure out, you know, where

02:11 we're at and what have you. But the tracks are strong. The tribes are strong. It's

02:17 still a tug-of-war, but again, we're over the 50-yard line to start the session.

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