Lawmakers in Maryland say sports betting could be up and running by summer, after voters approved a constitutional amendment to create a sports betting program with proceeds benefiting education.
The Maryland House unanimously passed a comprehensive framework for sports betting early this year, before the pandemic shortened the session, leading lawmakers to go the route of the constitutional amendment, with details to be negotiated later.
Maryland state senators last week said the sports betting framework will be put on a fast track to get the revenue coming into coffers by the middle of next year.
“It’s very important in this age of Covid, where the economy is still suffering, that any additional revenue we can get from sports betting will be helpful to helping to closing the budget gap around education,” said state Senator Craig Zucker, a Montgomery County Democrat who sponsored sports betting legislation, in an interview with the Associated Press.
Details to be hammered out include the revenue tax. A nonpartisan analysis by lawmakers has estimated Maryland could generate $18.2 million per year in revenue from retail and mobile sports betting, assuming a revenue tax of 20 percent.
Also to be determined is where sportsbooks will be located—likely at the state’s casinos and racetracks—and whether online and mobile sports betting will be permitted.
“I can’t imagine a scenario where the state wouldn’t allow (sports betting) online,” Zucker told the AP.
“What else is included and how those bets are made, that’s to be determined,” Zucker said. “I think the biggest obstacle that we were facing was: Do Marylanders approve it or not? And I think there was a resounding yes.”
Gordon Medenica, Maryland’s lottery director, told the AP that two years of consideration in the legislature—which missed the deadline to get a ballot measure on the 2018 ballot—has created a situation where the framework will be implemented quickly. “That’s given us an ability to get a head start on crafting the regulations, which is a pretty extensive legal-intensive thing about basically all of the rules of how these games and the sports betting will take place,” Medenica said.
