Most of California’s tribes still oppose efforts to legalize sports betting in the state, according to Indian Gaming Association Conference Chairman Victor Rocha.
He minced no words when he told Sports Handle a new initiative was “destined to fail” and when it did, would “damage the brand”of mobile sports betting apps on the heels of a 2022 shellacking from the tribes.
“The reality is you have to get the California voters to approve it, and if they’re not ready to support any initiative, don’t move forward with a bad one,” added James Siva, chairman of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association (CNIGA). “It’s going to make it so much more complicated and expensive when tribes do come back and want to push something on sports betting.”
Rocha and Siva hosted a livestreamed conversation which zeroed in on the initiatives by Kasey Thompson and his company. To qualify, Thompson needs to collect 874,641 signatures. Does he have enough backing to physically collect the signatures? With most of the tribes turning their backs on his proposal and how it materialized?
“‘Follow me, we’ll take you to the promised land’ doesn’t really work on so many levels,” Rocha told Sports Handle.
While it sounds good on paper, Rocha opposes the provision to “cleanse a lot of offshore guys,” who could then offer legal betting.
“Tribal gaming is the most well-regulated in the country,” Siva told Sports Handle. “Why would we put that at risk?”
Major sportsbooks have also come out against the initiative.
“We recently learned that the authors of two sports wagering initiatives in California are trying to find financial support for signature gathering from sports betting operators,” read a statement by the Sports Betting Alliance (SBA), a group that includes DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, and Fanatics sportsbooks. “In the interest of clarity, and consistent with our previously stated opposition to these measures, we can commit that SBA won’t be funding or otherwise supporting either of these sports wagering initiatives.”
The SBA has learned its lessons, Siva said. “Now they’re seeing that if there is a path to sports betting in California, it begins and ends with the tribes.”
Siva worries that if smaller tribes throw their support to Thompson it would potentially divide the tribal nations.
“We shouldn’t be looking to outsiders who don’t share our common interest or share our history,” said Siva, who predicts it could take four years to gain enough support. “We’ve really got to figure out how to do this as a tribal community.”
To this end, while Siva supports an “incremental approach” that would see retail wagering precede the online version in California, “If we lose an election cycle, we start to lose time and maybe we have to look at doing it all at one time,” he told Sports Handle.
