- A hearing was held on Thursday to discuss sports betting in Illinois.
- Lawmakers added amendments to IL HB 3308.
- The sports betting rules in Illinois is slowly taking shape.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – A House subcommittee held a hearing on Thursday to discuss what sports betting should look like in Illinois.
The Illinois State House Sales, Amusement, and Other Taxes Subcommittee began discussions on IL HB 3308 to fill it with sports betting language. The bill is a shell bill that originally had no real text and the subcommittee met to amend the bill with sports betting language. There were a couple of different amendments that were debated during this hearing.
Push For Remote Mobile Registration
One of the amendments that were considered is what Illinois is going to do about online and mobile sports betting. Governor J. B. Pritzker has a goal of $200 million to be generated from sports betting in his 2020 budget proposal. To reach that goal, lawmakers believe that mobile sports betting is necessary.
To help boost mobile sports betting, lawmakers from Illinois are thinking about doing what New Jersey is doing and allow people to register for their accounts remotely. The vice president of Sportradar Jake Williams was at the hearing, and he advocated for remote registration.
“If this is a recreational product, you shouldn’t require that people drive out to a specific location just to place a sports bet or register. Give [retail operators] the opportunity to expand their footprint by giving them the capability to do this in a mobile environment,” said Williams.
This has been proven to work. Over 80 percent of the sports bettors in New Jersey use their mobile device to place their bets. This means that a large percentage of sports betting taxes collected came from mobile bets. Lawmakers heard this argument and agree if they do not have a proper online market, sports betting will not do well in Illinois.
eSports Betting Could Happen
One of the fastest growing industries right now is eSports. More video game competitions between teams or individuals are being played with millions of dollars on the line. Lawmakers are now considering allowing people to bet on eSports.
The reason for this to be considered is that world-famous Fortnite player, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, is from Illinois. Business Insider reported that Ninja makes $6 million a year due to how popular he and the game is. Lawmakers are looking to use the popularity of eSports has with Millennials to boost sports betting revenue.
Some lawmakers are apprehensive to add eSports to the sports betting bill. The reason is that the lawmakers simply do not understand what eSports really is. Stakeholder said that eSports will be much easier to monitor because of developer data, so eSports betting could be coming.
The Question About Collegiate Betting
Betting on college game is always a hot-button issue when discussions about it are brought up. That being said, the universities in Illinois are completely against it. Like the other universities around the country, they are worried that college athletes could be bribed to fixing a game.
However, the universities do understand that it is a strong possibility that college sports betting could happen. The universities did come up with a list of provisions to be added if lawmakers allow college betting. Some of the provisions include not being allowed to bet on college teams from the state or making sure that the minimum sports betting age is high enough to some gamblers who are students from betting on the games.
This was only the second hearing that was held for sports betting in Illinois. What started as an empty shell bill now has amendments to help dictate what sports betting will look like in the state. Not everything discussed was added to the bill, but they are now being considered for future hearings.