A sports betting bill continues to be negotiated as Senate President Karen Spilka urges House Speaker Ron Mariano to abandon his “all-or-nothing” approach to college betting.
With only four days left in the legislative session and a sports betting bill still in negotiations, Massachusetts House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz is “still hopeful” that a compromise agreement might emerge soon.
“It’s still a good time here to go,” Michlewitz, who sits on the six-member conference committee, told MassLive on Wednesday afternoon. “A lot can be done in a short time, as we have seen.”
The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a bill authorizing sports betting in the commonwealth last summer. But the Senate waited until this spring to adopt more restrictive legislation — full of consumer protections to curb problem gambling, including a ban on credit cards for betting — that does not allow college sports betting.
Excluding that provision frustrated House Speaker Ron Mariano, who repeatedly called it a deal breaker that will only fuel more betting on the black market. Mariano last week regretted that lawmakers were “far away” from reaching a consensus.
“I think there’s an opportunity to include college sports, rather than letting it just be handled by bookies,” Mariano said. “I mean, I don’t understand, if you’re going to be doing sports betting, why you’d leave out Final Four bowl games and the entire college football season. It doesn’t seem like it’s worth doing if you’re going to leave those out.”
Gaming experts say Massachusetts should pursue a compromise arrangement that would allow collegiate sports betting, except for Massachusetts schools and games played in the commonwealth.
Michlewitz declined to reveal whether that approach is being considered in conference committee.
“I will say that the position of the House has been that college sports are critical to making a whole new market,” Michlewitz said. “If you don’t have college sports betting, then not only do you not have an option for the consumer, but you also don’t have an option for people who may choose to want to use it occasionally but also do the other things. , and they may decide to stay on the black market because that’s more convenient.”
But those comments are at odds with Senate President Karen Spilka’s stance on sports betting.
Spilka, like Michlewitz, hopes lawmakers will strike a deal before formal sessions end Sunday. However, in a WBUR interview on Tuesday, Spilka threw the fixed issue of college sports betting authorization at Mariano.
“I would like to see sports betting end and pass and on the governor’s desk before the session is over,” Spilka said. “The speaker said … if college sports betting isn’t in it, there’s no point in doing it. I would hope and I would ask that the speaker change that position and not take an all-or-nothing approach.”
Mariano was not available for comment Tuesday or Wednesday.
Spilka said excluding college betting from any pending legislation reflects “pleading” by “every single college president and every athletic director” who says such betting is “not a good thing.”
“These presidents and athletic directors know their students,” Spilka said on WBUR. “So that’s why in our Senate version of the bill, we didn’t allow college but we allowed all the other sports.”
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