Efforts to Legalize Sports Betting in California Heat Up

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00:00Meanwhile, we're trying to push things going here in the state of California to get sports betting

00:04legal. We know that this is going to be a major issue in the next few years, Sam, because again,

00:08you also have the tribes involved. I'm still optimistic eventually this will happen and

00:11they'll get it together. I mean, if Florida can get their act together, Sam, with the tribes,

00:15I believe that California can too. Any progress there?

00:19Yeah, it's, California has been one of those states that everyone's been waiting on and hoping

00:23for forever. A couple years ago, you had the failed ballot initiatives where both sides spent

00:28over $400 million on a campaign that got about 16% of the vote, which was just, just embarrassing,

00:34frankly, if you have the industry. So since then, they've been, the sports books have been trying

00:37to negotiate with these tribes. And it's, California is a really interesting case because

00:42there's over a hundred tribes in the state and they don't often come together and agree on

00:46things. So not only do you need to get to agree with the tribes, you need to get them all to agree

00:51with each other. But there was some significant progress made this week at a Indian gaming trade

00:57show in San Diego, where representatives from the Sports Betting Alliance Tribal Advisory Council,

01:02which is comprised of some key tribal members in the state, representing sports books like

01:08FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, and Fanatics. They met with tribal leaders to discuss a framework

01:15of a plan that would legalize sports betting in California. It would be fully and totally

01:20tribally owned, which is a big, big component here. The tribes have control of gaming. So they

01:25have basically been the roadblock to letting it happen. They won't let sports betting happen

01:29unless they have full control. So that's a big part of it. And it would also be fully commercially

01:34funded. So the $400 million that the sports books forked over on their failed ballot campaign,

01:39they would be funding all the money in this case as well, trying to get this back on the ballot,

01:44this time under an agreement with the tribes that doesn't cut them out. This was only the first step

01:49was kind of floating this plan out there to them, but I'm told that the tribes were receptive, but

01:54the tribes are very much wanting to maintain that they want to go at their own pace. We will move

01:59when we move, we act differently. So one of the components here could be that accelerates

02:04things is prediction markets, which we've talked about a bunch. If those are in California and

02:10essentially sports betting is happening there anyway, the tribes kind of lose some leverage

02:15there unless something happens federally, unless the state takes action, which I don't think is

02:19likely. So that could be the case of where it's pushing them more in this direction, where they

02:22then have to work with the sports books, but it would bring a lot of money to the tribes, which is

02:26also something they really care about. It's an $8 billion market conservatively, it could be even

02:31more when it legalizes. The sports books would be sharing revenue with the tribes, essentially doing

02:36all their operations and forking over a percentage directly to the tribes, which could be life

02:41changing for some smaller ones that get about $1 million in federal payments right now that could

02:45balloon to $10 million a year, which, and for the larger tribes, even way more money we're talking

02:51about here.