North Carolina Senate nears final vote on sports betting

Finish line ahead on yellow street sign
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The last time the North Carolina Senate voted on sports betting, it failed by a single vote.

This time around, there are still opponents to HB347, but most of the Senate is on board with the bill, which would legalize commercial online and retail sports betting as well as advance-deposit wagering apps in the state.

During the second reading of the bill, the Senate approved the measure by 38-11. There was one amendment added on the floor to clarify language but nothing materially changed from the version of the bill that advanced out of committee.

As reported previously, the Senate has made material changes to the bill, including upping the tax rate from 14 to 18% and ditching a plan to allow for historical horse racing. Accordingly, the bill will need to go back to the House for concurrence.

It is there that the measure could run into problems. Local news outlet WRAL reported Wednesday that the House could opt against backing the bill they previously voted through.

“Right now the plan is that we don’t concur, but we’re going to talk through it,” House Speaker Tim Moore told the outlet. Both Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger have said there is a desire to wrap up casinos and other gambling expansion options into a single bill along with sports betting.

The handful of Senators that spoke against the bill did so largely because they did not think gambling expansion of any kind would be beneficial to the state and its residents.

“This bil…a lot of people are talking about it as legalizing sports betting but it’s actually not what it does. It really, it really just provides a monopoly to some large-scale gambling operations that operate nationally. And it just creates a large-scale way for those organizations to use sophisticated technology to entice people to bet and then bet again and then bet some more,” argued Sen. Lisa Grafstein.

“The other problem is that the bill doesn’t actually regulate the industry in a meaningful way,” she added. “The commission that’s created is specifically forbidden from setting parameters around minimum or maximum payouts or bets. There’s no limit to how skewed the odds can be. The bill says that the operator is supposed to protect private data, including financial data and to disallow ineligible players, which of course means people underage. But the standard that is applied is ‘commercially reasonable effort’ for doing those things and for detecting suspicious or illegal wagering. So under the terms of the bill itself, you don’t actually have to prevent those things.”

The opponents of the bill seemed aware the bill would move forward but took the time to voice their objections nonetheless. They will get another opportunity this week when the bill is called for a third reading and a final vote.