The New York Gaming Commission has waived oral presentations by New York online sports betting license bidders in hopes of getting the industry up and running by the Super Bowl.
According to Elite Sports NY, Senator Joseph Addabbo Jr. supports the move and says it won’t compromise the integrity of the process. “If the gaming commission in its professional opinion and the bidders, knowing they’re professionals in the industry, are OK with this, then full steam ahead,” Addabbo told the website. “If there’s any way we can protect the integrity of the process and speed up the process to get it where we need to be before the Super Bowl, than let’s do it.”
Addabbo says the industry should be fully operational by February 13, 2022, Super Bowl Sunday, and may be underway before that date. Commissioners set a deadline of December 6 to award two online sports betting licenses. Six groups of bidders have applied for the available licenses.
Addabbo said the state should expect a few speedbumps along the way.
“There will be issues, there will be problems. We have to take the volume that we expect to happen in New York, we have be ready for all the attention, all the focus that will be on New York entering the mobile sports betting arena, and we have to be ready,” he said.
Addabbo said the groups of licensees, which represent the biggest names in mobile sportsbooks, are experienced and knowledgeable enough to launch quickly in what could be one of the country’s leading markets.
“Speed to market is right up their alley. This is what they do. This is their business. I think they could be ready tomorrow if we asked them to be.”
In related news, according to the Albany Times-Union, the New York Gaming Commission is relying on casinos and gaming operators to exclude patrons for any reason; those names will added to the state list, which currently has no entries.
“At present there’s no one on the list,” spokesman Brad Maione told the Times Union. “The commission has not undertaken to add names to the excluded persons list, but each gaming facility themselves has certain authority to bar individuals.”
“New York is yet to find a single person deemed worthy of banishment” from gaming venues, the newspaper reported, despite the presence of “five organized crime families in New York City alone, in addition to multiple criminal organizations that could be interested in gambling.”
James Walden, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said the no-list list is “mind-boggling,” as is the lack of a process to add criminals to the list. “Not to mention convicted drug traffickers, given the widely known use of casinos to launder money,” said Walden, a partner in the firm of Walden Macht & Haran in Manhattan. “It seems like an enormous hole, easily filled. The absence of anyone on the list is a clear indication that the powers that be don’t really care, and do not want to fill it.”
At least in theory, New York law allows for the exclusion of “career or professional offenders” and those convicted of “any crime of offense involving moral turpitude,” as laid out in Section 1342 of the New York Racing, Pari-Mutuel Wagering and Breeding Law.
The commission can prohibit “cheats and persons whose privileges for licensure or registration have been revoked,” the law states.
Convicted murderer and mob underboss Sammy “The Bull” Gravano is not on the list, Maione said, because “he is not known to patronize New York gaming facilities.”
Patrick McKenna, a spokesman for the New York Racing Association, said the association can remove customers and permanently ban people “for a number of reasons including bad behavior, past criminality or actions that violate NYRA policies.”
“Accordingly, NYRA maintains active records to ensure those who have been ruled off are not permitted to enter Belmont Park, Aqueduct Racetrack or Saratoga Race Course,” he said.
