Indiana Sports Gambling

Hey there, I’m Alejandro. I’m a sport living in Indiana, USA. I am a fan of sports, football, and gambling. You can read my blog with a click on the button above.

Indiana is now open for business. After years of efforts, cheers and despair, the state’s constitutional amendment legalizing sports betting appears to be implemented. Legal sports betting will be able to commence there in a couple of weeks, at race tracks and taverns, and will include both wagering on actual games as well as on games about which the state has wagering regulations.

If the odds are right, here’s what it looks like — and for a little context, I’ve also compared it to the legalization of sports gambling in Nevada.

Some initial observations:

1. The biggest political beneficiary seems to be the Big Ten — the conference that has lost control of its playoff situation to Notre Dame. With the college football season starting soon, the Big Ten ought to score a nice windfall from this.

2. States that want to legalize sports betting can presumably do so, with most provisions (though not all) coming under the control of the federal government. That means that when the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, it turned its back on years of constitutional research and argument aimed at protecting states from federal overreach. It also means that the court’s legal analysis of both sides of the case was misleading. For example, just as Nevada had to finance its sports gambling operation out of existing taxes on casinos and other forms of gambling, so must all other states by definition: that is, sports betting revenues are taxes on gambling. At some point Congress might change the definition of “gambling” to something else. But until that happens, it seems reasonable to assume that sports betting revenues will continue to flow to states, just as, presumably, the gambling revenues of West Virginia, Kentucky and elsewhere will continue to flow to the states where the gambling occurs.