Up to 1,400 locations around the state could be eligible to offer sports wagering under a new rule proposed by the Montana Lottery. The Montana legislature legalized gambling on sporting events earlier this year and hopes, if the rules process goes smoothly, to have the first bets placed before the end of the year, officials said in the Independent Record.
The proposed rules were released at the end of September. The comment period for the rules ends November 4.
“We anticipate being ready for an end-of-the-year launch, but the public comment piece is a very important piece of it and we will follow that,” said Jennifer McKee, a spokeswoman for the lottery.
Under the proposed rules, bettors can place wagers on college and professional sporting events. The lottery will offer a mobile phone app where people can look at lines and upcoming events to plan their bets, but wagers can only be made when a person is physically inside a licensed retail location; beacons in sports gaming terminals will recognize when cell phones are in the location before allowing people to make bets on a mobile device. Bets can also be made at terminals for people who do not want to use the app.
Earlier this year, lawmakers amended the sports betting bill to restrict its availability to places with gambling. The proposal put out by the lottery clarifies that further, saying that sports betting locations must have appropriate alcoholic beverage licenses in addition to a gambling operator’s license.
“The lottery has taken this approach because by limiting eligibility to locations that possess the appropriate alcoholic beverage license for certain gambling activities, the lottery will ensure a sufficient number of locations to offer sports wagering and help limit any adverse impacts of an overabundance of population,” the rule said.
A memo for a legislative committee with oversight over the lottery notes, “There may be a potential legal issue with the commission’s proposal to require an alcohol license to be eligible to be a sports wagering location.”
Because alcoholic beverage licenses are distributed based on population, the lottery says linking sports wagering to that requirement makes sure the betting’s distribution will be similarly balanced.
“These are draft rules and we want to hear from the public their thoughts on this,” McKee said. “It is just a draft,” McKee said.
The planned rule also set up a self-exclusion process, which is a tool for people who should not be wagering on sports to block themselves from doing so. That could include people like athletes, coaches or sporting officials. Self-exclusion approaches have also been shown in research to help address problem gambling.
“This is a tool for anyone who should not be participating to just block themselves,” McKee said. She added the lottery has begun the process of reaching out to colleges and universities to discuss the rules and possible implications of sports wagering.
The state legislature passed two sports betting bills this year, one that put the program under the state lottery and one that would have opened it up to a private market. Montana Governor Steve Bullock vetoed the private market bill, opting to put it under the Lottery because it allowed the state to “have the ability to control, monitor, and protect sports wagering products,” he wrote in a veto letter.
Gambling operators have been sharply critical of the state’s decision to have its current lottery contractor, Intralot, administer the new sports wagering program. They argued a contract to run sports betting could be worth $4 million to $6 million, meaning it should have to go through the state procurement process.
The state and lottery countered that sports betting was already envisioned in their contract with Intralot, signed in 2015, even though it was illegal then. That’s because the contract required Intralot to be able to add new Lottery games as necessary. The new state law allowing for sports wagering classifies it as a lottery game.
Some industry groups appealed to the interim legislative committee that has oversight of the lottery to force the agency to open up bidding on a new contract, but the committee does not have the power to do so. The likely avenue to try to require the state to solicit bids would be a lawsuit, but gaming groups said this week they’ve given up the fight.
