The Fix Is In: Sports betting is on tap for Delaware
Delaware is getting sports betting because the developers say so.
Exhibit A: This large addition being tacked onto the Rollins Center to accommodate sports betting.
Exhibit B: this NJ article.
Notice the brazen developers taking sports betting for granted? I mean, sheez. Can’t they keep their backroom deal cutting a secret? They need to shove it in everyone’s face like that?
My guess is that, in addition to sports betting, there will also eventually be a casino in Wilmington, either at the riverfront or elsewhere. I can’t see Wilmington legislators acquiescing to sports betting w/o some means of expanding casino gambling beyond the phony horse racing tie-in.
I mean, how long can you be ‘a little bit pregnant’?
And with casinos coming to the Philly area and eventually to Maryland, the gambling interests will be able to convince the General Assembly and next governor that expansion is essential to protect ‘our economic interests’.
Good to see these bullshit laws fall (hopefully). The major sports leagues, the NCAA, and the mobs will not be happy, and that’s a good thing.
Gaming = tax on people who are mathmatically challenged.
Gaming in Wilmington = the true kiss of death….drug, prostitution, etc. Pros coming to town.
YIKES!!!
…..and a Pox on money grubbing ‘developers’
Oh, I thought your WNJ link would be to their Sunday front page article about how Congress is going to legislate away the benefits of corporations incorporating in Delaware. The implication of that being that we’d be forced to allow sports betting to make up for the lost revenue when Wilmington becomes a corporate ghost town.
I am very happy and prosperous under the system of government enforced gambling. It would be better if they made it a mandatory way to blow surplus income.
As much as I hate the racket that is “legalized” gambling – sport betting migth be a little less regressive than slots.
Slot machines are straight up case of the rich ripping off the poor.
Graph Link
It is ok as long as the government makes porn mandatory too.
Jason: To be fair, McGinnis hedged his bets, saying it’s a long shot and all. The fact is the legislators would be morons to insist the bets be placed on site (which of course increases the chances that they’ll insist on exactly that. They’re nothing if not pikers.) Put the sports gambling online, make it available to the world, and the volume will more than make up for the lost tourism dollars.
GRex: I assume from your tone — well, it’s your normal tone, but you know what I mean — that you realize Delaware’s corporate advantage isn’t about to disappear. If Ralph Nader got elected, maybe, but the noise out of Washington is just that. The quotes to read closely in that story are Dr. Charles Elson’s. Run his name through Nexis/Lexis for an idea how highly he’s regarded in the business world.
Steve: Realize that the three racinos will fight tooth and nail to keep out any competing gambling venue. The only thing I expect will crack that front will come when the Rickmans sell DelPark (they’ve been pumping the profits out of Delaware for years), at which point it might dawn on the Dover Dumbbells that the money is being sucked out of the Delaware economy instead of recirculated. That won’t help the Harrah’s people, who have the best plan for a new casino, but who knows what the landscape will look like once this dawns on our legislative morons.
Al: While I agree the racinos will fight tooth and nail, my point was that, since the racinos would want sports betting, those seeking to expand gambling beyond the racinos would finally have some leverage to do something about it. You want your sports betting…OK, here’s what it’s gonna take to do it.
There is one issue that ultimately will have to be addressed…and that is the loophole that enabled slots to come to Delaware in the first place. As I understand it, since lotteries are exempt from constitutional prohibitions on gambling, slots were defined as ‘video lotteries’. Maybe that explains why it seems like none ever pay off. That will ultimately have to change if full-scale casino gambling is to gain a foothold in Delaware.
I am not advocating it, mind you, but I know that where there’s a will, there’s a way and a flock of lobbyists just aching to show legislators the way.
Yes Al, you correctly identified my tone as sarcastic.
Steve- I will agree with all of this as long as the legalize marijuana and whores. ok?
Like they say, a Libertarian is just a Republican who wants to smoke pot and get laid.
I am being sarcastic anon….
And I am a democrat, but I love the libertarian philosophy of personal liberty and maximum individual freedom and a government that protects that. It is called left-libertarian. The way I see it that it means I like government….I want government to protect the people. I think Liberals do that the best most of the time. Getting laid and high would just be a bonus- if I am going to be forced to gamble why can’t I be forced to smoke weed and screw hot whores? Snark, snark, snark
Just to be fair I mean?
Anon- you can see here how libertarianism might actually decrease prostitution….
http://delawarelibertarian.blogspot.com/2008/03/las-vegas-south-east-asia-or-china-who.html
Brian: My personal opinion is, that of prostitution, marijuana, and gambling, the one that does by far the most harm to society is gambling.
So, if gambling is legal, then…
Right, why not open everything up….why be selective for the benefit of an elite minority?
“Slot machines are [a] straight up case of the rich ripping off the poor.”
Admitting, Jason, that the State of Delaware signed one of the stupidest percentage breakdown of profits contracts that any state ever put its X on, I have to ask whether or not it matters what slots revenue is used for.
If a State uses gambling revenue to fund education or even health care, and focuses most of the benefits on poorer citizens, is this still a rip-off?
(Again, I’m psoting a hypothetical, not Delaware’s inane contract.)
Well, given Delaware’s penchant for career education, I fear that the money that would go to Education would train kids how to deal poker, blackjack and serve cocktails.
But seriously, have you walked around Atlantic City? It is not a city of opportunity. Vegas, not much better.
Geek- I know; people need real meaningful oppurtunity to change things in their environment to have any sense of staisfaction with their work or life. We typically either choose or choose not to live in our own “brave new worlds.”
Geek, I’m actually thinking of a different example: the four counties that surround the city of Montgomery Alabama. There they’ve put in gambling while the city itself hasn’t. The counties dedicated the gaming revenues to public education and have raised teacher salaries about 40%. This has resulted in the best teachers in the state migrating to the area. People in the city of Montgomery are furious because their best teachers left town to go to the “ring” counties where they make so much more money. Student test scores are up and satisfaction with those districts is at an all-time high.
That having been said, I agree that it is not a slam-dunk that gambling revenue streams will be used for good social purposes, but then that’s true for any tax or fee, isn’t it?
Steve: There will be no such trade-off, because the non-racetrack casinos don’t have enough backers to demand that. The racinos have many lawmakers on their side — we’d have to take off our shoes to count them all. Remember, there’s also a large anti-gambling group — in most states it’s over 50 percent of the public, and there’s no reason to think it’s lower here — so a “compromise” that brings in sports betting plus more casinos will be harder, not easier, to pass than one that brings in sports betting alone.
Just remember how “connected the folks that run Dover Downs and the Delaware State Fair are
Al: Most legislators are ‘connected’ in one way or another. Any vote to allow sports betting would require support from legislators who are not tied in with the tracks.
In addition, I’m not sure where sports betting falls in the ‘video lottery’ universe. If the Delaware Constitution would have to be amended to allow sports betting and table games, then an affirmative vote of 2/3 of the members in 2 consecutive General Assemblys would be required. That ain’t gonna happen without compromise.
You are correct that there are anti-gambling forces. However, the fact that Delaware does not generally submit issues like this to referendum means that, in my opinion, if the big boys want it, the big boys will get it.
I think that expanding gambling simply reflects a bankruptcy of decent ideas as to how to move our economy forward by other means. And it does disproportionately impact those who can least afford it. So I’m not advocating for an expansion, just giving my perspective on what I think could happen.
Good points Steve. This state is all about “magic bullets” in the form of video lottery or privatized roads or snagging the next credit card banking industry by creating some kind of tax loophole.
But we need to be in the slow and steady business of making Delaware the kind of place that attracts and keeps creative, energetic entrepreneurs.
I tried video lottery once – they threw me out for scratching the screen with my quarter.