Bill that allows betting on University of Kentucky sports advances in legislature
A bill to legalize sports betting in Kentucky was amended Wednesday to allow betting on the sports teams of in-state public universities, opening the door to betting on University of Kentucky and University of Louisville sporting events if the bill becomes law.
House Bill 137, which would legalize sports betting at horse racetracks and the Kentucky Speedway, was unanimously approved by a House Committee Wednesday. It now goes to the full House of Representatives for a vote.
“This bill is not going to solve our challenges but it is a good first step...” said Rep. Al Gentry, D-Louisville. “Sports betting is already here, we just want to regulate it, we just want to retain the revenues that are leaving.”
The push to pass a sports betting bill has become a legislative priority for lawmakers thirsty for new sources of revenue to help pay for the demands of a tight budget. Several Republicans, including bill sponsor Adam Koenig of Erlanger, have been joined by Democrats in backing the bill. Gov. Andy Beshear called on the legislature to pass a sports betting bill in his State of the Commonwealth Address Tuesday.
The bill would raise an estimated $22.5 million in tax revenue for the state.
Similar bills have met a dead-end in the legislature, including one in 2019. Koenig said the biggest complaint against the previous version of his bill was that it did not allow people to bet on Kentucky’s college sports teams.
“If you’ve got five wagers you want to make over the weekend and one of them is on an instate college team and you’ve got to do four legally and one illegally, you might just make all five illegally,” Koenig said.
The athletic departments of the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville released a joint statement Wednesday that said they will remain neutral on the sports betting legislation because their priority is to protect the best interest of student athletes.
“Even as we know that state and federal officials will be charged with enforcement of these issues rather than our respective compliance offices, we will continue to be proactive in educating our student-athletes about the issues surrounding sports wagering in order to protect their welfare and the integrity of competition,” the statement said.
In order to bet on sports, people would either have to bet in-person at the horse racing tracks or at Kentucky Speedway, or go to the race tracks to download an app that would allow them to bet at home. The state would tax profits at 10.25 percent for in-person betting and 14.25 percent for online betting. The Kentucky Racing Commission would oversee betting.
The amended bill also would end the requirement to download an app at the racetracks by January 1, 2022, which Koenig said should help create competition in a sports betting industry that will be anchored by Kentucky’s already established gambling institutions.
“People, if they’re so inclined, will be able able to download every app from every track across the state,” Koenig said. “So that should provide plenty of competition.”
While the bill sailed through committee, it still has some opposition. In the front row at the hearing, people wore stickers on their jackets saying “Expanded gambling is no dice.”
Martin Cothran, with the conservative Family Foundation of Kentucky, briefly expressed moral concerns over the bill before making the case that sports betting is expanded gambling and therefore requires a constitutional amendment.
“There is no criteria by which we can say that expanded gambling requires a constitutional amendment and sports wagering does not,” Cothran said. “There is no net with holes big enough to let sports wagering in that are small enough to keep expanded gambling and other forms out and that is because it is a form of expanded gambling.”
Cothran said that there are only three forms of wagering allowed under the constitution: pari-mutual horse betting, charitable gaming and the lottery. Cothran said that means the bill would have to be passed as a constitutional amendment, which would require more votes to approve in the legislature and would require Kentuckians to vote on it.
He was met with opposition from Rep. Chad McCoy, R-Bardstown, who pointed out that Cothran wasn’t citing legal arguments that dealt with sports wagering.
Koenig said during constitutional debates in 1890, delegates at the constitutional convention said “all species of gambling and all games of chance, such as oontz, craps, bucket-shops, grain gambling, betting on baseball, draw poker and lord knows how many other species” would not be barred by the constitution.
“They clearly did not intend for this constitution to outlaw wagering on baseball and one can only assume other sports activities,” Koenig said.
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 10:55 AM.
