00:00Finally, let's get to Illinois and a new bill basically being pushed here.
00:05Is there a chance sports betting taxes change, Sam, in that state?
00:10Yeah, Illinois is an interesting case.
00:12It raised taxes on sports books this past year, which then FanDuel and DraftKings passed down to bettors with their surcharges famously.
00:21And it's been a very high tax state.
00:22As soon as the city of Chicago saw that, they had the idea, why don't we get our own money from sports betting on top of what we already get?
00:29The city gets about 2% of all betting revenue that comes from the state's tax.
00:33But recently this summer, some lawmakers proposed charging a 10% handle tax on top of that, which would just be crippling for sports books and potentially change the way they do business beyond the surcharge in the state.
00:47This week, the sports books got a win because lawmakers filed a bill that would essentially block Chicago from doing that.
00:53It would clarify that only the state of Illinois can impose a tax on sports betting.
00:59And not a city.
01:00So, you know, the tax has not been adopted yet.
01:03It has not been passed yet.
01:04But this bill is kind of a blocking measure that would prevent it from going in place if, in fact, it did.
01:09The people who filed it are actually representatives of Chicago.
01:13So they're from the city.
01:14They're kind of saying, you know, this is really going to cripple the industry if we do this even more.
01:18I think it's really important when we talk about this stuff because so many places want to keep taxing sports betting more and more and more, which is well within their right.
01:26But there gets to a point where the bubble bursts and sports books either don't want to do business or they change the way they do it by passing it down to the customers, which obviously we've already seen in Illinois.
01:36Now, importantly, legislature is not adjourned or they haven't met yet.
01:40So nothing on this bill can move until January 2026 when they get in session.
01:44But more than anything, it's kind of a blocking measure getting out in front of this thing to prevent Chicago from putting what would be a very, very heavy tax in place.
01:52We'll see you next time.
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