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SportsTranscript
00:00Looks like some real progress being made here in Texas. A former state secretary
00:04is backing sports betting here. And look, a lot of folks are backing sports betting in Texas. Some
00:09of the biggest names out there involved in ownership and such. I wonder if this will move
00:13the needle as well. You know, they just keep piling the names on you. This is John Scott,
00:19a former secretary of state who served under the current governor, which of course is kind
00:23of where we're seeing some difference in this issue is Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is
00:29against sports betting and gambling expansion in Texas. And that's the big major block. But
00:35to your point, and what we just came is more and more proponents are piling on. Of course,
00:40we have the sports team owners, Jerry Jones, Tillman Fertitta, Mark Cuban. Now,
00:46Miriam Adelson's dumping millions of dollars into lobbying efforts to get these politicians to say,
00:52wait a second, this is great. So we'll see what happens there. John Scott, this former secretary
00:58of state, came out and said, hey, this is something I think that the state needs to do.
01:02The Texans want it. We need to give them the ability to vote, which of course would require
01:06to pass the Senate, which is where Lieutenant Governor Patrick is. He's long been against it,
01:13saying it's not on our party platform. So something needs to happen to convince him
01:19to kind of let up the brakes there. And a lot of that is going to have to be with a lot of
01:23senators coming out and saying, hey, I'm for gambling, which is of course against the party
01:28platform. So that's where the sticking point is. This is where the industry is watching. It's a
01:32potentially massive market, potentially the biggest in the country. So the industry wants
01:37this. The eyes are on it. The strongest lobbying efforts are probably here right now in Texas,
01:43because whether it's this year, 2027, it needs to get done. And that's the kind of
01:48yearly kind of educational push we've been talking about. It takes time to get these things going,
01:52but momentum is building in Texas, and it'll be interesting to see if it
01:57pays off this year or if we have to wait a couple more years.