Delaware Sports Betting: New Bill Aims to Expand Market
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SportsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 - Okay, so let's head over to Delaware,
00:05 a new bill for the casinos in sports betting.
00:09 You know, BetRivers, obviously one of the big players there.
00:11 What do you think this holds for the future in Delaware?
00:14 - Yeah, Delaware is a really interesting state.
00:16 It's actually the first state, not Nevada,
00:18 to take illegal sports bets.
00:20 So essentially when, you know,
00:22 the US sports betting wave started,
00:23 Delaware was the first one,
00:25 but they've only really had one app in the state since then,
00:28 which has been BetRivers, you know,
00:30 which is questionable if you, you know,
00:32 just looking on the surface at most states
00:35 having Fandle, DraftKings, BetMGM,
00:37 or even 20 to 25 different apps.
00:39 It's been interesting that Delaware
00:40 has only stuck with one.
00:41 It's obviously a smaller state,
00:43 so that could be why as well,
00:44 but there's this bill that was introduced
00:46 that would essentially allow the state's existing casinos,
00:49 there's three of them,
00:50 to each partner with two more online sports books,
00:53 what's called skins,
00:55 so each casino would have access to at least two partners,
00:57 which could mean that there's as many as six or seven
01:00 sports books in the state if it gets passed.
01:03 Now, the tricky thing there is,
01:06 would operators really want to come in?
01:08 They, you know, they haven't been really angry
01:10 about not being entered into the market.
01:12 BetRivers enjoys their monopoly there.
01:14 Actually, when the bid was up to, you know,
01:17 have the monopoly over online sports betting in Delaware,
01:20 Fandle, DraftKings, BetMGM,
01:21 there wasn't much interest from them at the time.
01:24 Obviously times have changed.
01:25 It's been very, it's been a while since then.
01:28 The landscape is different.
01:30 The market share battle is different.
01:32 And in a year when you don't have, you know,
01:34 most legislation is installing or failing
01:37 in a lot of states,
01:38 and it kind of seems like there's a plateau
01:40 that the industry's hitting in terms of 37 states now,
01:43 this could be a good opportunity for them
01:44 to come in relatively easily and just grab up a new state.
01:48 Pretty interesting as well,
01:50 that the bill is a pretty friendly tax rate.
01:52 It also allows operators to deduct promotions
01:56 that they give out from their taxable revenue,
01:59 which is a trend we really saw a lot of states address
02:01 over the past couple of years,
02:02 reversing that saying,
02:04 oh, we don't want to allow you this mechanism
02:06 to just dole out a million promos.
02:07 So Delaware doing the opposite here,
02:09 thinking that they want more, you know,
02:11 promo friendly market, a more competitive market.
02:14 So I think that's something interesting to watch too,
02:16 is if that legislation bleeds over into other new states
02:19 or how states kind of rethink sports betting going forward,
02:22 but we'll see what happens with the bill.
02:23 It was just introduced.
02:25 It could be a case where it's an election year.
02:27 So this isn't a huge priority
02:29 for some lawmakers in the state,
02:30 but yeah, so far relatively good news for companies,
02:34 if you want to come in and we'll see if they,
02:36 if they take advantage of it or not.
02:37 (upbeat music)
02:40 (bells chiming)