SCOTUS Scraps Federal Ban on Sports Betting

Filed in National by on May 14, 2018

The News Journal is spinning today’s Supreme Court decision 7-2 decision throwing the sports-betting decision back to the states as a loss of Delaware’s East Coast monopoly on sports betting, but that’s misleading. Delaware could only offer NFL parlay bets, greatly limiting public interest. If the state now moves to legalize other forms of bets, it will probably reap more vigorish than it was doing under its highly restrictive “monopoly.”

According to TNJ, Delaware might not need any further legislative approval to expand its offerings, because the law legalizing the NFL betting in the state was originally much broader; only a court order brought about the restrictions. Because the original law is still on the books, the state might be good to go.

I haven’t seen much analysis from SCOTUS reporters yet, but this is precisely what conservatives want to do with Roe v. Wade — toss regulation back to the individual states. It should also mean big bucks for lobbyists, as all the professional leagues and the NCAA continue to oppose legal betting.

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  1. chris says:

    I hope Schwartkopf puts the kybash on the casino bailout bill now. The three monolplies will make larger profits from this expanded gaming and don’t need a new $20 million annual relief” from the state that can go to other more worthy places in the budget.

  2. Liberal Elite says:

    @c “The three monolplies will make larger profits from this expanded gaming”

    I think that this decision breaks up the monopolies. Unless the states want to protect some over the others, this throws things wide open. Every state is going to be different.

    But you’re right that the casino bailout no longer makes any sense. It would be money down the drain. There’s zero advantage for Delaware.

    But in all, this SCOTUS decision is not optimal. Poor people and others on the fringes will pay the price, and it’s not just a monetary price. The entire social fabric will suffer.

  3. Rufus Y. Kneedog says:

    It will also allow the GA in Dover to budget another $40 million in spending for 2018-19.

  4. RSE says:

    “It should also mean big bucks for lobbyists, as all the professional leagues and the NCAA continue to oppose legal betting.”

    I don’t understand their argument seeing that the largest gambling market in the world, Asia, has been gambling on US sports for years. Same in Europe.

    There is the odd problem with match fixing in English and European Football, the most heavily wagered on sports leagues in the world.
    One of reasons for the problems is that you can bet on so many aspects of the games over there. For instance, people just last year bet on whether a fat goalkeeper would eat a meat pie at halftime…and he did. He was later fined and banned.