Legalizing Sports Betting In California

The Rancho Mirage Casino opened a new bar called the 360 Sports. It has over a dozen television screens that feature games, sports, and horse racing events. 360 Sports bar offers mouthwatering food and beverages that guests can delight in. The bar also installed video poker machines along the bar sits below running tickers that display sports schedules and scores of different sports events.

360 Sports was introduced as a sports bar and restaurant that offer an array of live sports programming as well as custom video selections for its guests and patrons. The bar basically provides just about everything that any sports enthusiast would want, except for one thing – sports betting.

Since sports betting isn’t yet legal in California at this time, sports bettors, for the time being, have to visit a bookie, make use of an off-shore betting app or go to other neighboring states where sports betting is now legal.

Legalizing Sports Betting in California

When the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was overturned by the Supreme Court on May 14, 2018, both blue and red states have hurried to make legal sports betting.

Since the ruling, 20 states have made legal certain types of sports betting, Michigan being the latest one to do so.

However, California, a state with the highest number of professional sports teams and where it is usually identified as “ahead of its time”, has appeared to fall behind with the legalization of sports betting. It’s not because they don’t want to make it legal but because it is a complicated matter involving the constitution of the state and decades-old compacts that allow casinos only on tribal lands. All 63 casinos in California are on tribal lands and bring in a yearly revenue of around $7.9 billion.

Sports betting is perceived by the lawmakers of California, the tribes as well as national casino businesses as potentially profitable, but its implementation process may take longer compared to other states. Nonetheless, lawmakers of the state of California along with other states already had a preliminary hearing in January regarding the legalization of sports betting this 2020.

But then again, because of the global pandemic that halted public interaction and temporarily shut down many business, California’s initiatives to legalize sports betting my again take longer and be put on hold until 2022.