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Legislation that would legalize mobile sports betting in Nebraska is one of the issues being considered during a special session of the state’s unicameral legislature.
Republican Governor Jim Pillen called a special session of the state legislature this summer to consider several revenue-related issues to reduce property taxes in the state, and state Senator Eliot Bostar, a Democrat, introduced a pair of bills that would amend the state’s constitution to permit mobile sports betting.
Currently, land-based sports betting is only permitted at state-licensed racinos in Nebraska.
Pillen said during a press conference last week that he would introduce a priority bill in January during the next regular session of the legislature to approve mobile betting.
“People have spoken, we’ve approved gambling,” Pillen said. “Online sports betting is real and it’s happening in the state. Whoever wants to do it is doing it, and we’re giving all the revenue to our neighbors.”
Bostar, however, argued that the legislature should act sooner to permit voters to weigh in on the issue rather than wait until a potential referendum in 2026.
“If we think this is something that’s going to happen, all we’re doing by delaying is sending more Nebraskans' money to other states instead of using it to help the folks right here in our constituencies,” Bostar said during a hearing of the Senate's General Affairs Committee, where the bill was considered Wednesday (July 31).
Lance Morgan, CEO of Ho-Chunk Inc, the economic development arm of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, which owns two casino properties in the state, said the tribe supported the plan and had already reached market-access agreements with DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM if mobile betting is ultimately legalized.
“If you’re not with one of the larger entities, it’s like MySpace versus Facebook on the internet, and we wanted to make sure that we weren’t Sears versus Amazon and had the old technology,” Morgan said. “And so we proactively engaged these companies in case this ever happened, and the minute it becomes legal, our contract with them kicks in and we become partners.”
“We just didn’t want to be left out in the cold,” he added.
Under Bostar’s two companion bills, Legislative Bill 13 and Legislative Resolution CA3, each racino would be eligible to partner with one mobile sports wagering platform.
Danny DiRienzo, senior director of government relations for GeoComply, pointed to the company’s map of geolocation checks that showed high volume on the border between Nebraska and Iowa, where mobile betting is legal.
"I haven’t researched every cornfield in the United States, so I’m taking a bit of a leap of faith on this, I actually don’t know if it’s the busiest cornfield (for sports betting) in the U.S., I suspect it is,” he said, pointing to a location which marks the first exit on the main highway that leads from Nebraska to Iowa.
“There is literally nothing there, and GeoComply processed 500,000 geolocation checks,” DiRienzo said. “I would submit that’s not organic Iowa sports-betting traffic, that is very likely all related to Nebraskans crossing the border to place a legal wager.”
Opposition to Bostar's legislation came from, among others, former University of Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne, a legendary figure in the state who served in the U.S. House of Representatives after retiring from football. He argued that the harms of gambling expansion would be more costly to the state than the revenue it produced, and referenced recent scandals in college sports with regard to athletes betting and harassment of athletes as increased risks.
“I can attest to the fact that the most intense criticism and negative circumstances that coaches and athletes have is often not just due to losing on the scoreboard, it often results from not beating the point spread or meeting [other metrics],” Osborne said. “The athletic contest becomes less of a sporting event and more of a gambling exercise with a gambler’s financial security at risk.”
Osborne also pushed back against the idea that the state needed to recapture the revenue that was flowing to other states.
“Sometimes you buck the flow,” Osborne said. “If all the revenue here was going to Iowa, was that beneficial? You would think that Council Bluffs would look like Abu Dhabi, but it doesn’t.”
The special session has no defined end date, and the constitutional amendment would require 60 percent support from the Nebraska Senate to send the issue to voters in November, where a majority vote would be sufficient to adopt the amendment.
