Legalized Sports Betting Gains Influential Backers in Texas

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00:00Looks like some real progress being made here in Texas. A former state secretary

00:04is backing sports betting here. And look, a lot of folks are backing sports betting in Texas. Some

00:09of the biggest names out there involved in ownership and such. I wonder if this will move

00:13the needle as well. You know, they just keep piling the names on you. This is John Scott,

00:19a former secretary of state who served under the current governor, which of course is kind

00:23of where we're seeing some difference in this issue is Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is

00:29against sports betting and gambling expansion in Texas. And that's the big major block. But

00:35to your point, and what we just came is more and more proponents are piling on. Of course,

00:40we have the sports team owners, Jerry Jones, Tillman Fertitta, Mark Cuban. Now,

00:46Miriam Adelson's dumping millions of dollars into lobbying efforts to get these politicians to say,

00:52wait a second, this is great. So we'll see what happens there. John Scott, this former secretary

00:58of state, came out and said, hey, this is something I think that the state needs to do.

01:02The Texans want it. We need to give them the ability to vote, which of course would require

01:06to pass the Senate, which is where Lieutenant Governor Patrick is. He's long been against it,

01:13saying it's not on our party platform. So something needs to happen to convince him

01:19to kind of let up the brakes there. And a lot of that is going to have to be with a lot of

01:23senators coming out and saying, hey, I'm for gambling, which is of course against the party

01:28platform. So that's where the sticking point is. This is where the industry is watching. It's a

01:32potentially massive market, potentially the biggest in the country. So the industry wants

01:37this. The eyes are on it. The strongest lobbying efforts are probably here right now in Texas,

01:43because whether it's this year, 2027, it needs to get done. And that's the kind of

01:48yearly kind of educational push we've been talking about. It takes time to get these things going,

01:52but momentum is building in Texas, and it'll be interesting to see if it

01:57pays off this year or if we have to wait a couple more years.