Zolak and Bertrand react to Massachusetts legalizing sports betting
Zolak & Bertrand started Monday’s show reacting to Massachusetts legalizing sports betting in the state after years of it being viewed as unlikely. Hardy: As it stands right now, the…
Zolak & Bertrand started Monday's show reacting to Massachusetts legalizing sports betting in the state after years of it being viewed as unlikely.
Hardy: As it stands right now, the version that we're looking at-
Beetle: -Is the version we wanted.
Hardy: It's everything. It's everything that we wanted. And believe me, if you thought you were going to be able to get college betting that included Massachusetts schools, that wasn't going to happen.
Zo: That's the give-back.
Beetle: However, I do find it interesting that they adopted what I believe Connecticut has, which is if a team from within the state is in the NCAA tournament, you are allowed to bet on them. So if UMass can get back to the tournament, you can bet on it.
Hardy: Which is just more money for the state. That's good. That's more money that's going to be coming in. The House of Representatives and those people got this first thing together, really, really push for it, that's who deserves the credit for this thing, because they had it right from the jump.
Beetle: Their version from the jump was great. They voted that. I think the vote when they voted on their version was 156 to 3 in the House. So it's overwhelming support in the House for the version that has now passed. And so from a consumer perspective, all of our listeners that are interested in this as a consumer, someone who wants to use one of these products, there's a ton of good news. One, there is college betting allowed. Number two, there are going to be bets, and brick-and-mortar-style sportsbooks at casinos. The casinos will have licenses.
Hardy: That's called the "Paulie [in the truck] Clause" in the bill.
Beetle: That's right. The other part is the number of licenses for mobile, you know, situations, your DraftKings, FanDuel, Barstool, whatever you want to wager on, there's going to be seven of those. And if you look at some other states like New York, New York only did three.
Hardy: Well, how many does New Hampshire have?
Beetle: I'm not exactly sure, I would have to check on that, but it doesn't feel like a lot. So, I think Massachusetts got this right. They added seven mobile licenses, which is a - I think a decent number, which is going to allow for some competition in this field. And it's going to lead to more revenue for the state in licensing fees.
If you want to hear more of the conversation, tune into the first hour of Zolak & Bertrand to hear the full discussion. It can be found here:
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