California Senate Moves to Ban Online Sweepstakes Casinos

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00:00You mentioned California and the Senate there out west voted 36 nothing to send a bill that

00:05would ban online sweepstakes casinos in the state back to the assembly. So where do we go from here?

00:13Yeah, it's a good question. The California's moved swift and quickly to ban the sweepstakes

00:19casinos and sportsbook games, which basically a lot of people are identifying as just a,

00:25you know, pseudo sports betting option that has been, you know, that functions a certain way.

00:30So it can skirt state gambling laws. Obviously, California does not have legal sports betting.

00:34It does have prediction markets right now, but the state is even fighting against that. There's a

00:38lawsuit and pretty much any form of gambling or any form of wagering that says it's not gambling.

00:45So it doesn't have to follow the law has been really met with swift force in California.

00:50There's been a lot of tribes kind of behind pushing this bill forward. The fact that it was moved

00:54forward unanimously, I think says a lot tribes have a huge, huge, tremendous influence in the state

01:00with their lobbying power. They, you know, of course, were the group that basically got the

01:05sports betting ballot proposition defeated just a couple years ago and have been the reason that

01:09sports betting kind of remains illegal in California. So they've really been swift in

01:14the response to what they see as alternate forms of gaming where sweepstakes go from here. I would

01:19imagine there's not much they can do just kind of cut their losses. Once they get kicked out of the

01:23state, there could be a lawsuit which challenges it down the line. I don't think that they would

01:27win that. But I think this will probably spread to other states that we've seen now move against,

01:32you know, sweepstakes. We've seen the move against fantasy sports that acts like sports betting. And

01:36we've certainly seen the move against sports prediction markets as well. So this is just kind

01:40of where we're headed with the industry right now.