The Tennessee Education Lottery recently released proposed regulations and hired Jennifer Roberts as director of sports gaming regulation. The draft rules will be sent to the state’s Sports Wagering Advisory Council for review and will be posted online. The lottery board will consider the rules following 30 days of comment from the council and the public and then take vendor applications.
No start date for sports betting has been established. Tennessee will be the first state to offer mobile-only sports wagering although officials said the regulations probably will be adopted in mid-January. Sports betting tax revenue is included in the 2020 budget. Analysts estimate Tennessee sports betting could produce $4 billion a year in wagers, with $250 million in annual revenue for operators at a tax rate of 20 percent. In New Jersey, mobile sports wagering accounts for 80-85 percent of monthly handle.
The published rules and regulations include:
- No in-game prop bets on collegiate sports
- No prop bets on “any type of possible injury”
- A push in a parlay makes the parlay a loss–not industry standard
- The Lottery will approve all sports betting advertising and marketing
- Sportsbooks must allow customers to set betting limits if they so choose
- All sports-betting technology must be physically based in Tennessee
- Books must report handle annually
- “Commercially reasonable terms” for league data on in-play bets not clearly defined.
Utah native Roberts worked for 11 years at the gaming law practice Lionel Sawyer & Collins in Las Vegas. She also serves as associate director of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law. She earned a Juris Doctor in 2002.
Roberts said, “The state is creating its own brand of sports betting. I see this as a great opportunity. I love working with regulators, and this is an opportunity to be involved in the process from the beginning. We know that mobile wagering usage is growing. There is no cap to the number of licenses, so I would think we’ll see the big companies enter the market. I believe this will become a very active market,” she said.
Tennessee Education Lottery Corporation Chief Executive Officer Rebecca Hargrove said, “We are excited to have Jennifer join the Tennessee Lottery team. Her experience and knowledge in sports gaming will be extremely helpful as the Tennessee Education Lottery Corporation develops the foundational components and regulatory management for the first-of-its-kind, online-only sports gaming product.”
UNLV International Gaming Institute Executive Director Bo Bernhard said Roberts “served as a pioneer for the university’s ground-breaking gaming law program.” He credited Roberts with the growth of the gaming regulation center, which has advised and educated governments on six continents and nearly 50 dozen global jurisdictions.
