Even though Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a comprehensive gambling law in June, the Illinois Gaming Board still must draft hundreds of pages of rules not spelled out in the law. To help the board with its monumental task, Chicago’s five major professional teams—the National Football League’s Bears, Major League Baseball’s Cubs and White Sox, National Basketball Association’s Bulls and National Hockey League’s Blackhawks—recently sent a letter about launching sports betting, which is included in the new gambling law.
“We believe the issues below must be resolved to get sports betting operational at Illinois sports facilities and to meet the goals of sustaining and promoting tourism and generating revenue for Illinois,” wrote Gaming Attorney Donna More of the Fox Rothschild law firm, representing the pro teams. She previously served as general counsel for the Gaming Board and also is running for Cook County state’s attorney in the 2020 primary election.
Before they spend $10 million on a sports betting license, plus a $250,000 application fee, the pro teams spelled out several suggestions and concerns—including lowering the licensing fee. Another issue under the new law is that pro teams can open on-site sportsbooks and offer mobile sports betting within their venues. But the teams want to clarify that they—not the venues—can hold the master license, and take it with them if they move to a new venue in Illinois. The new law allows a master sports betting license to be “issued to a sports facility or its designee,” but does not specifically state that the team itself can receive a master license. A sports with at least 17,000 seats can apply for a master license; seven are available under the new law.
Another concern is the use of the terms “block” and “radius.” The new law allows betting windows inside or within a “5-block radius” of Guaranteed Rate Field, Wrigley Field, Soldier Field and the United Center. However, the pro teams’ letter states, “While radius is a circular dimension, a block is typically a square dimension. Clearly, the Act intended the curved dimension as the radius or it would just have said ‘within five blocks’ of a sports facility.” The teams suggest regulators adopt the 660-foot measurement used by the Chicago Department of Transportation.
The teams also want regulators to prohibit within the “5-block radius” on-site and mobile sports betting or marketing connected to casinos. They also want regulators to ban Illinois Lottery parlay betting kiosks. The new law allows the lottery to run a pilot program including 5,000 kiosks throughout the state, which would “result in another major source of wagering saturation in the state” if left unchecked around stadiums, More wrote.
She added, “Protecting the teams’ exclusive right to authorize sports wagering activity within the 5-block radius both promotes the economic interests of the state and community, and protects the teams’ investment in their fans and the quality and integrity of the game.”
Other issues raised in the letter include allowing patrons to register in person, as the law requires, at only one outlet even if a company owns multiple on-site or online sportsbooks; allowing multiple “outposts” for sports betting within each venue and within the requested 5-block radius; and clarifying that biometric data regularly collected by teams will not be used in sports wagering.
State Rep. Mike Zalewski, who led the sports betting portion of the new gambling legislation, said the teams’ recommendations were “pretty consistent with what they’d been telling us in the spring, that while they had specific concerns about what would make a venue license viable, they still do wish to participate in the market.”
The teams’ comments were submitted during a public comment period, authorized by the Illinois Gaming Board, which recently closed. Besides the pro teams’ letter, the board received more than 35 replies—most regarding the new law’s suggestion that the board require licensed sportsbooks to purchase official data from leagues and their third parties. Most sportsbook operators strongly oppose this measure, including William Hill, PointsBet, MGM, Penn National, the Illinois Casino Gaming Association and the industry trade group iDEA Growth. Only Tennessee mandates using official league data.
William Hill Head of Government Relations Danielle Boyd wrote, “Such a mandate could result in monopoly pricing power for the leagues. Additionally, William Hill has noted that federal courts have rejected the assertion that the league have any intellectual property rights to data, further ruling that this data is public information.”
Other issues public commenters addressed included branding, in-person registration, banning wagering on Illinois college teams and input from Illinois horseman’s groups. The NFL, NBA and NHL players’ associations say they’re concerned about the personal safety of players and providing a way to report prohibited contact anonymously.
The gaming board has not issued a timetable for launching sports betting. Lawmakers had hoped for an early 2020 rollout but that may not be achievable, officials said.
