With the U.S. Supreme Court expected to deliver a ruling on the constitutionality of the federal law that current bans sports betting, in the case of Christie v NCCA, the Rhode Island Lottery has issued an RFP for a company to run a legal sports betting service.
Obviously if the high court retains the ban that work will have been for naught. But most legal authorities expect the Supreme Court to change the law in some way or the justices wouldn’t have agreed to review the case.
The 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) makes sports betting a crime in all but four states, including Nevada.
According to the report in the Providence Journal, the Lottery plans to offer the service through the auspices of the state’s two casinos, the Twin River Casino in Lincoln and the Twin Riverton Casino Hotel, which is being built in Tiverton.
The Lottery argues that revenue from sportsbetting is vital to protecting the $872 million the state currently collects.
The Lottery’s Request for Proposals must be ratified by the Rhode Island legislature. Governor Gina Raimondo has been trying to pressure the lawmakers to act by including $23.5 million in revenue from sportsbetting in her budget for next year.
Rep. Anthony Giarrusso criticized the governor’s action: “It looks like a Hail Mary to me,” he said.
The Lottery hopes to be able to start taking wagers by October 1 at Twin River, but its RFP implies the possibility of online sports betting. It says that bidders should be able to show “their capability to readily adapt to any future additions to authorized sports betting operations in the state including, but not limited to, remote sports betting.”
The RFP has large holes in it, leaving many details to be included later on, once the details of Supreme Court ruling are known.
The RFP assumes that Twin River is interested in bidding for the sports book contract, although Twin River has not said that it is.
