Delaware Looking At Plans To Offer Sports Betting Through State Lottery

Delaware, famously known by its nickname as “the First State,” could actually be the first state to get the nation’s first legal sportsbook off the Las Vegas Strip up and running by no later than June.

Like other states around the country with highly developed and successful lottery programs, Delaware is looking to roll out its sports betting product through its state-run Lottery. This is a move that makes a good deal of sense on multiple levels, considering that the Delaware Lottery is widely dispersed in the small state and is even popular throughout the various states comprising the New England region. Additionally, the Delaware Lottery is already the provider of one of the few sources of legal sports betting outside of Nevada – in this case, the increasingly profitable Delaware NFL Sports Lottery, which is, in essence, a pro football parlay.

The office of Gov. John Carney released a statement to that effect at the tail end of last week that flew under the radar in the midst of all the happenings nationwide after the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the keystone federal law that kept sports betting more or less contained to Nevada. The longstanding Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) made allowances for states that already had existing sports betting legislation on the books to be exempted from the law’s prohibitions against sports betting operations prior to the law’s approval by Congress way back when. Even though Delaware was one of the four states that was allowed to offer some kind of sports betting product (the aforementioned NFL parlay cards, which were first offered in 1976), those states were not allowed to actually expand their legal sports wagering presence beyond the scope of their pre-1992 laws.

Now that the highest court in the land has declared PASPA to be unconstitutional for violating the anti-commandeering principles of the states’ rights-laden 10th Amendment, Delaware and every one of the other 50 states is free to pursue whatever course of action regarding legalizing and regulating sports betting that the voters and lawmakers see fit.

According to the statement released on the afternoon of Thursday, May 17, the Delaware Department of Finance and the state Attorney General’s Office have determined that there are no “legal obstacles” standing in the way of full-scale implementation of sports betting in Delaware. Of great interest to sports betting enthusiasts should be the fact that “full-scale” includes single-game wagering and even head-to-head betting options as well.

The difference between Delaware and the other states that were not subject to PASPA’s prohibitions, and especially when compared to the other seven or so states that passed laws to authorize sports betting pending a decision from the Supreme Court to overturn PASPA, is that very same lottery parlay. Delaware simultaneously has been legally able to offer some kind of sports betting, has an existing state Lotto-based sports betting product and has passed a highly permissible 2009 sports betting law that allows for further expansion in this area means that the First State has the leg up on the competition.

Pretty much the only aspect of sports betting that is definitively off the table per the 2009 law is that no wagering can be accepted on teams based out of Delaware or on sporting events taking place there. That really is not of great concern even for local sports fans, as Delaware’s typically successful college sports programs are few and far between and there are no major professional franchises in any of the big leagues that call the First State home.

Further sweetening the pot for Delaware is that nearby New England states like Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island – al natural competitors for a newly minted Delaware sports betting market - are nowhere near as close to getting the job done as the First State is. All three of those aforementioned New England states had been eyeing and in some cases aggressively making moves to legalize sports betting in anticipation of a favorable Supreme Court ruling to yank down PASPA, but they still have a long way to go before they can make it happen. Delaware, on the other hand, could legally already be issuing sports betting licenses to operators at its casinos and lottery retailers, although it will probably be a little while yet before the three casinos doing business in the state are really ready to start operating fully fledged sportsbooks.

Rick Geisenberger, the finance director for the state of Delaware chimed in on that subject in an interview with local media representatives late last week as well, saying that casino employees would be starting to get training on accepting bets on sports as early as this week. The state is hoping to wrap up training protocols by this Friday and then start testing out betting software for any bugs and system errors before having a “grand opening” of sorts. Still, Geisenberger, as bullish as he might be on the whole shebang, is not promising the moon to reporters looking for a scoop: he said the entire training, testing and general feeling-out process is being handled carefully as part of what he called “a conversation with the casinos.”

“We’ll start when we’re ready and they’re ready,” was all the finance secretary had to say in closing on the matter.

Like we mentioned earlier, one of the most exciting components of Delaware’s sports betting marketplace is the very real possibly for rapid expansion into other subsections and segments of that market. Using casinos as a springboard, Delaware sports betting (in the sense of full-on Las Vegas-style sportsbook offerings, not just the usual parlays) could soon be taking place everywhere that lottery tickets are sold – meaning bars, convenience stores, kiosks at truck stops, you name it.

Nevertheless, the state government is being prudent by not issuing any kind of timeline for these adaptations and expansions, once more trotting out Geisenberger to say things like “over time, if that’s what people are looking for, that’s what we’ll offer.” Seems like a pretty smart move, and there is really no impetus any more for trying to beat everybody else on the block to get sports betting up and running.

That perceived necessity has all but evaporated in recent weeks as New Jersey, which actually did the majority of the fighting in the Supreme Court chambers in the run up to the PASPA decision, probably won’t be the first state to offer a sportsbook. The thanks for that good turn of luck can be paid to the New Jersey Senate, which introduced a new companion bill the lower house’s sports betting legalization legislation just about a week ago. In the state Senate’s version of the bill, any sports betting operator that starts taking action before regulations are finalized in Trenton will be permanently barred from obtaining a sports betting license in the future, which put the brakes on Monmouth Park’s plans to open the doors on its sportsbook before Memorial Day.

Monmouth Park’s show runners are not stupid, and neither is the Garden State’s first big partner in the sports betting world, that being the US branch of UK-based international sportsbook operator William Hill. Nobody is going to risk getting shut down or shot down at this stage in the game, not with a major breakthrough in terms of legal sports betting being the reality nationwide. Patience never hurt anybody, but if competing states now have to tread lightly lest they get blown off the track altogether, we look for little Delaware to surge ahead of some of the bigger names in the game.

There really must be something to having the foresight of passing a law – however limited – to legalize some form of sports betting way back when. Now that PASPA is gone and all the states will be gearing up to square off for regional sports betting market dominance around the country, Delaware looks poised to take the lead, and that is good news indeed for resident sports bettors in the area.

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