Having failed twice to persuade the Washington legislature to pass a bill that would allow commercial card rooms, like the 19 such casinos that Maverick CEO Eric Persson owns in the state to offer sports betting, Persson is contemplating trying to qualify a measure for the ballot that would accomplish the same thing.
That would require gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures, a task that will continue to be difficult since the state is only slowly emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Persson argues that it is a fairness issue. That the gaming tribes should share sports gaming with the 44 card clubs. The tribes say that, unlike big business, that they finance governmental services with gaming, including sports betting, although as yet there are no sports betting facilities in the state since tribes have yet to finish negotiating amendments to their tribal state gaming compacts.
Persson and his allies have $2 million in PAC money to spend on qualifying and then campaigning for such a referendum. And he has his own money, too. He told U.S. Bets: “Signatures aren’t a challenge at all,” Persson says. “Signatures are a matter of paying $9 a signature. It’d probably cost about $2.7 million.”
But the tribes have plenty of money too. They don’t pay taxes on their gaming revenues and they have a well-established political presence in the state capital.
If the measure qualifies for the ballot, it would require 60 percent of the vote to pass a gaming law.
Online news operator Paul Queary of the Washington Observer explained the uphill battle Persson has: “It’s a combination of raw clout and the moral high ground—the payback for the colonization of their traditional lands, and they take the money to feed, house, care for and educate their people,” he said.
Rebecca George, executive director of the Washington Indian Gaming Association, has been making that argument for months.
“Tribal gaming is government gaming. The lottery is government gaming. It’s the same,” she said recently. “The state offers a scratch ticket; we offer an electronic scratch ticket. The money goes back to the people. Allowing major expansion of gambling into neighborhood card rooms would seriously harm tribal communities. We rely on revenue from tribal gaming to provide services. These are government revenues that go to help some of the poorest communities in the state.”
Persson is not intimidated. He declared, “Commercial sports betting is coming to Washington—that’s just a fact. The state is taking a measured approach, but it’s not impossible to see mobile wagering as well. Sports betting is in its infancy in Washington state.”
To qualify for the ballot would take about 400,000 signatures, he figures. Queary thinks he could do it by appealing to customers who walk through the doors of his casinos. “Costco ran a signature drive to privatize alcohol and set up a table at every Costco and said, ‘Hey, do you want to buy booze here?’” he said. “Maverick could get the signatures. It would just be really expensive.”
Persson appears to think the money would be well spent. “The card rooms lost money last year, while the tribes made $2.8 billion,” he said. “If you take a look at the geographic overlay, card rooms don’t overlap with tribes, for the most part. This is a profit grab at the end of the day. That’s why, ultimately, there will be commercial sports betting. We provide a lot of great jobs. The story of ‘there’s not enough room for everyone’ is wearing thin.”
