New York Assemblyman Gary Pretlow expects Gov. Andrew Cuomo to include sports betting in his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, a move that will make legal bookmaking in the Empire State, in Pretlow’s words, “a done deal” in 2019.
“I think the governor wants to do this,” said the veteran Democratic lawmaker, who chairs the Committee on Racing and Wagering in the lower house and is one of the Legislature’s leading advocates for gaming expansion.
Up to now, Cuomo mostly has struck a cautious tone on the issue, but Pretlow believes New Jersey is proving the tipping point for the powers that be in Albany.
“New Jersey is doing even better than expected with sports betting because they’re getting all that New York action, which is what I said would happen and it’s happening. I read in New Jersey they brought in $24 million from sports betting in September, which is huge.”
New York’s experience would dwarf that, according to most experts, meaning Cuomo “will probably want to put some form of sports betting in the budget as revenue enhancement,” Pretlow said.
“There may be some tweaks in subsequent legislation, but if it’s in the governor’s budget then it’s a done deal.”
To help clear the political path he said he will forego any legislative attempt to get online poker on the books. Online poker bills passed the Senate in 2016 and 2017, but Pretlow was never able to move them through the Assembly. Cuomo, moreover, is said to be cool to the idea.
“I would give up online poker for sports betting,” Pretlow said. “If I had to make a choice, I would choose this over online poker just because the revenue stream is so much better doing this than online poker.”
While he doesn’t expect any movement on sports betting before the governor unveils his budget in April, he plans to reintroduce unchanged his 2018 sports betting bill when the Legislature reconvenes in January. The measure would authorize the state’s casinos and racetracks to offer both land-based and mobile wagering with winnings taxed at 8.5 percent. It also provides for a royalty fee payable to the professional sports leagues of 0.2 percent of every bet, a contentious provision which the gaming industry opposes nationwide.
How the bill will fly in the Senate is anybody’s guess, he said. “I don’t know the feeling of my new counterpart in the Senate, so I don’t know what they might want to add, subtract or change.”
Pro-gaming Senator John Bonacic is retiring, leaving vacant the chair of the Racing, Gaming and Wagering Committee in the upper house. It is not yet known who will take his place, but it will be a Democrat as the Senate flipped parties.
But even if Pretlow is right about Cuomo being on board, the potential for opposition from other quarters could be significant.
For one, there’s the 2013 amendment to the New York Constitution that authorized commercial casinos in the state. It allows them to offer sports betting, too, but whether that extends to remote betting off-property is likely to be hotly debated, especially in light of a recent state court ruling that says the Legislature violated the Constitution two years ago when it authorized daily fantasy sports.
Pretlow said he’s hoping it won’t be necessary to float another amendment, a lengthy process requiring approval from successive sessions of the Legislature and then a yes vote from the electorate in a statewide referendum.
But certainly he is aware of the danger. “The Constitution says that sports betting is legal in the casino, but it doesn’t say it’s legal anyplace else,” he noted. “If the server is in the casino and someone in the city of New York is betting on that casino’s website or app, is that enough to satisfy the Constitution?” He added, “I have lawyers looking at it, and some say it’s not needed while some say it’s needed.”
There is finally Albany’s relationship with its powerful Native-American gaming industry to consider. One major question there is whether remote betting violates the regional exclusivity built into the tribes’ federally mandated casino compacts with the state. The Seneca Indian Nation, which owns casinos in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Salamanca, has already cut off revenue-sharing with the state in a compact dispute that appears rooted in bad feelings over the competition from the commercial casinos, which began opening on the fringes of their upstate markets at the end of 2016.
