The Illinois Gaming Board recently opened a month-long public comment period seeking input from the sports-wagering industry and any “other stakeholders.” Sports betting is part of the state’s new gambling law that also includes six new casinos with one in Chicago, thousands more video gambling machines and racetrack and airport slots.
The agency is charged with drafting thousands of new rules about license applications and other procedures before expanded gambling launches. Therefore it is accepting emailed suggestions about rules and any “other response regarding rulemaking” for sports betting. Gaming board Administrator Marcus Fruchter said, “This public comment period is an important step in a process to ethically and expeditiously establish a regulatory framework to allow sports wagering in Illinois. In order to make the process of rule creation as transparent and independent as possible, it is important that the public and various stakeholders have an equal opportunity to submit comments about the Sports Wagering Act contained in P.A 101-0031.”
The comment period will close Friday, September 27, during the National Football League’s fourth week. Submissions then will be posted to the gaming board website “in a timely manner,” the agency said. Fruchter said there’s no timeline on offering sports betting, but previously stated the agency will work “deliberately and not rush into something that either doesn’t work or has problems or any number of other concerns.”
In other Illinois sports-betting news, the Illinois Lottery is putting together rules and regulations regarding the lottery sports pilot program, also authorized under the new state gambling law, which will allow only parlay bets (picking the outcomes of multiple games in one bet). The first of its kind in the U.S., the program will allow bettors age 21 and over to place bets in electronic kiosks at up to 2,500 retailers in the first year of the pilot and another 2,500 in the second year. If all eligible retailers participate, they would total about two-thirds of the state’s 7,400 lottery retailers. The pilot program will expire January 1, 2024.
Prior to that, the lottery will call for competitive bids on the $20 million master license for a company to install, operate and maintain the betting kiosks through a central network system.
Illinois Lottery General Counsel Cornell Wilson said, “The department is working diligently to research and properly implement this program. It’s a great opportunity for the lottery to grow and facilitate the state’s revenue.” He said lottery staff are “reaching out to other states, looking at their models that they’re doing, working to understand how they’ve written new regulations and modified their statutes.”
Currently, only Delaware offers a comparable program, with parlay-only, in-store lottery kiosks at 102 retailers. It’s limited to college and NFL football, with a $2 minimum wager and parlays of at least three selections.
The program posted $6 million in revenue for the state in 2018, according to the Delaware Lottery.
PlayUSA.com Lead Analyst Dustin Gouker said Illinois’ parlay-only model is “a wild card” that could be competitive at first as a sports-betting novelty. “If it’s distributed enough, it might work out. But it has a lower ceiling than a true sports-betting product. It’ll have to be someone who accepts they’re going to lose money for several years, but someone will want a shot at it.”
