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Legislation is set to be introduced in Washington, D.C this week that would open up the city's mobile sports-betting market to multiple private operators.
An aide to District of Columbia Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie told Vixio GamblingCompliance that the Sports Wagering Amendment Act of 2024 will be filed on Friday (March 22).
According to a draft of the legislation obtained by Vixio, the forthcoming bill would allow holders of so-called Class A sports-betting licenses, which include major professional sports stadiums and arenas in the district, to operate their affiliated mobile betting platforms throughout the city.
Currently, the Class A licensees are only permitted to offer mobile betting within a two-block radius of their facility, in addition to retail sports betting on-site.
The three sports facilities that currently operate retail sportsbooks are Capital One Arena in partnership with Caesars Sportsbook, Nationals Park with BetMGM, and Audi Field with FanDuel.
The DC Lottery is the only entity currently permitted to offer district-wide mobile betting, with the exception of federally-owned land where gambling is prohibited by federal law.
Additionally, McDuffie's bill would create a new Class C license only professional sports teams who play in a facility with an existing Class A retail sportsbook would be eligible to apply for.
Five DC-based professional teams would be eligible for licensure under the provisions: Major League Baseball’s Washington Nationals; the NBA’s Washington Wizards; the NHL’s Washington Capitals, Major League Soccer’s DC United; and the National Women's Soccer League’s Washington Spirit.
“Our current model isn’t working, this bill will bring needed competition into the sports wagering marketplace and allows current Class A retail sportsbook operators to provide their mobile apps city-wide,” McDuffie wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.
“As we know all too well from hearings, roundtables, constituent complaints, and underwhelming revenues, the current sports wagering market has failed to live up to the promises to the District,” McDuffie said. “We can improve upon this landscape with this bill.”
In total, McDuffie's bill could increase the number of district-wide mobile sportsbook platforms from one to eight.
After several years of underperformance of the DC Lottery’s GambetDC product, lottery officials announced at a DC Council oversight hearing in January that current lottery vendor Intralot was preparing to subcontract the sports-betting program to a new nationally recognized operator.
In fiscal year 2023, the GambetDC platform only returned $1.3m in profits to the district’s general fund, less than half the amount it returned the previous year.
Last week, the DC Lottery announced that its new subcontracted operator would be FanDuel and that the Flutter-owned entity would take over the sports-betting operation “this spring.”
McDuffie, chairman of the oversight committee, was frustrated by the lottery’s announcement at the January meeting and reiterated his dissatisfaction with the GambetDC sports wagering program on Wednesday.
“The [DC Office of Lottery and Gaming] waited years to take these types of steps despite what consumers and residents across the District of Columbia have said has been a broken program,” McDuffie said in an interview with the Washington Post. “I’m working toward a bill because the system and the program they put in place simply doesn’t work.”
Private operators have called for a competitive sports-betting market in the U.S. capital since the activity was first legalized in 2018, but DC lawmakers instead elected to enact a sole-source contract with Intralot in hopes of launching a lottery-operated mobile platform ahead of legalization in neighboring Maryland and Virginia.
However, delays led to the GambetDC product failing to launch until March 2020, and the combination of a lackluster product and the coronavirus pandemic led to the platform failing to produce to expectations.
