Maine's Online Casino Bill Progress Amid Challenges

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00:00Let's talk about what's going on in Maine with online casino and of course a bill that you know

00:06is is making strides as you've written about but also there are a lot of different things that could

00:10kind of torpedo this along the way. So what's the latest? Yeah so Maine's an interesting market when

00:16it comes to gambling and online casino specifically. It's been talked about it you know it got shot

00:22down fully last year by both chambers. This year the house started up the discussions and of course

00:27it would legalize online casino operators to partner with the four tribal nations up in Maine.

00:35Sports betting went live in 2023 and three of those tribes partnered with Caesars and another

00:41partnered with DraftKings. So it's not a very vibrant I mean small population in the first

00:45place but not a super vibrant full market in terms of operators. But the house introduced this bill

00:51earlier this session to legalize online casino through those tribes. It was tabled so it kind

00:56of felt like nothing was going to happen. But eventually it just kind of got picked up past

01:02the house. The senate kind of punted it a little bit finally said all right let's get it you know

01:08and pass it and let's see what happens. Now Janet Mills the governor is kind of a roadblock. She's

01:13kind of not super friendly to gambling issues. She let the sports betting bill pass a few years ago for

01:20different sovereignty reasons for those tribes not because she's a fan of gambling. So her veto is the big

01:28looming thing and that everybody's pointing to. But there's another small step that's not really a small

01:34step. Anything that has a fiscal note and contributes to the state's pockets goes to this thing called the

01:40appropriations table where it's a small committee of members from both chambers who get to say yes or no or make

01:46some amendments. And weirdly enough only 10 percent of the bills that go to the appropriations table

01:52get off the appropriations table. So really we're at a small chance that this is going to get through

01:59but passing both chambers is a big step and for a year that we've seen very little movement by any

02:05online casino legislation this is still a pretty significant step. So it'll be interesting to see

02:11what happens on this appropriations table and if it gets off there to see what Governor Mills does.

02:16But again huge step for online casino this year in a otherwise pretty lackluster legislative session.