NY Sports Betting Bill Edges Forward to Senate Finance Committee

Finally, New York’s sports betting bill is showing some progress after stagnating for some time.

A few days ago, the New York Senate Racing, Gaming, and Wagering Committee have unanimously voted for the advance of Senate Bill 17.

If it gets approved, this bill would legalize both in-person and mobile form of sports betting in the state of New York.

Senator, Joseph Addabbo, introduced this bill back in January, and now it ed the Committee with 6 votes in favor of it and no votes against it.

So now, the bill will progress forward to the Senate Finance Committee for further debate.

More Details on the Bill

So, according to this bill, the plan is to introduce two different tax rates depending on the type of bet that the customers are placing.

Licensed NY casinos would have to pay 8.5% tax gross revenue coming from in-person placed bets…

…while, on the other hand, mobile sports betting would be taxed at a 12% tax rate.

Each operator would have to pay a fee of $12 million if it wants to obtain a license to operate a sportsbook in the state of New York.

Although the fee is quite high, the condition for each licensee is to pay the fee within 30 days of getting the license by the NY State Gaming Commission.

Casinos offering sports betting services in the state would also have to pay to the sporting governing body each quarter a royalty fee of 0.2% of the total wagered amount.

Sports Betting

All bettors that wish to place their wagers on sports events via mobile phone would be able to do so but only from inside New York’s boundaries.

They will first have to open their in-person at a licensed gambling venue or online through an approved platform.

Betting would be permitted on professional and collegiate sports events…

…but prohibited on the state’s high school athletic competitions or college sports contests.

The State Gaming Commission would be a regulator for sports betting and in charge of making agreements with casinos and sports governing bodies.

Sports Bill S17 still doesn’t have a date for its first session in the Senate Finance Committee but is expected to be set soon.

Proposing Bills Since January

The introduction of legal sports betting was in plans for the past few months and the gambling commission established a set of regulations in January of this year.

Their rules differed a lot from Addabbo’s bill. For example, they wanted to limit sports betting to only four venues, where only commercial casinos could obtain licenses.

They also didn’t want to allow mobile wagering or online betting. State lawmakers decided to omit mobile sports betting from the state’s budget for 2020, even though they included several reforms and initiatives for other forms of gambling.

For example, they included plans on fixing the pari-mutuel tax rate for the next five years, to simplify the Commission’s structure for video lottery gaming…

…and also set a cap on casinos offering free-play games to customers at 19% of the venue’s revenue.

Source:

“NY sports betting bill edges forward to Senate Finance Committee”, Joanne Christie, igbnorthamerica.com, May 14, 2019.