New York Tries Bargaining with Leagues on Sports Betting Issues

As the decision by the US Supreme Court on legal sports betting nears, lawmakers in states like New York are figuring out exactly how their new markets will be in regulated.
Earlier this week in New York, State Senator John Bonacic introduced a bill that spells out exactly how the state will deal with the thorniest issue surrounding regulated single game wagering, how to deal with the demands of professional sports leagues. In particular, Bonacic is looking at how to handle the leagues’ demands for a piece of the action by way of Orwellian-titled, integrity fees.
Bonacic’s bill, SB799 offers the leagues 0.25 percent of the gross revenue generated by operators offering single game wagering (in New York that includes casinos and race tracks). That’s a real shot across the bow to the leagues, which have been demanding one percent of the action. Under the language of bill, the integrity fee could not amount to more than two percent of the operator’s gross gaming revenue.
While there’s little doubt that the leagues won’t like the reduced integrity fee, they should like the fact that SB799 requires operators to use league data streams for in-play wagering. This would provide a major source of revenue from regulated sports betting to the very organizations that have opposed it for decades. Operators would, however, be free to use their own data for single game wagering. Bonacic did, however, leave the door open for leagues to make requests that operators use their data for multi-game wagers and futures.
Bonacic has acknowledged that threading the needle in an effort to please all the parties involved in regulating sports betting has been, “quite challenging.”