Legal sports betting in Maryland will officially wait until 2021 at the earliest.
Last week, state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. called off efforts to use the state lottery to sidestep the requirement for a constitutional amendment to legalize and regulate sports betting. Lawmakers had been considering a move to enact sports betting as an additional “game” in the state lottery, which can be added without legislative action. That would have had state residents betting on sports possibly before the end of the year.
Miller declared that effort dead after Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh told legislators that it would be illegal under the state constitution. That means a constitutional amendment approved by state voters, with legislation first passed to create a ballot question. That effort failed in 2018, which means lawmakers will now need to draft legislation next year to put a referendum on sports betting before voters in November 2020, meaning Maryland won’t see legal sports betting until some time in 2021.
Legislation will set up a regulatory structure and lay out how revenues would be distributed. The latest sports betting bill in the Maryland legislature would have taxed sports betting revenues at 20 percent—high by most standards, but well below the 36 percent being taken in Pennsylvania. Eighty percent of the state cut would go to an education trust fund, with 10 percent to local impact grants and 10 percent to a problem gambling fund. There would have been a one-time license fee of $300,000 and an annual renewal fee of $50,000.
Miller expressed disappointment in calling off the effort. “Everybody’s got a head start—Las Vegas, New Jersey… It’s very unfortunate,” he told the Washington Post.
