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ATLANTIC CITY, NJ (AP) – The major US professional sports leagues are divided on how to get a share of legal sports betting action after failing to convince early adopting states to reduce them .
But they are back in the game this year with several legislative bademblies of states considering giving them sports betting fees.
The National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League have fought consistently to stop the proliferation of sports games for years. and other states the ability to allow bets.
This pbadage from the courts to the states, to the congress and to the free market has revealed divisions among the leagues as to how to approach the inevitability of an expanded legal gamble.
Some are pushing individual states to include a 0.25% reduction of all sports betting placed in their states. Others focus on entering into free market agreements with individual gaming companies. Some do these two things and others say that they do not want or do not need sportsbook payments.
The US Supreme Court said last May that all states were free to legalize sports betting. Eight states are currently accepting bets, and many more should follow – some soon, others in the coming years. None of the laws pbaded in 2018 gave the leagues what they had hoped for.
But at least six states have included fees for leagues in sports betting bills they are considering this year, and more bills are expected.
The NBA, the MLB and the PGA golf circuit have begun lobbying individual states for direct payments, an idea widely recognized by lawmakers and lobbyists as a "right to integrity", but leagues prefer to apply for a fee. The leagues say they deserve to be reimbursed for their games to be free of scandal and manipulation. They also believe that outside companies generating money from games should share the profits with those who organize the sport.
"This obviously helps the leagues to compensate us for our product," said Bryan Seeley, senior vice president of Major League Baseball. "It also helps us with the costs of our integrity and regulation."
These costs include hiring additional people to oversee gaming and betting activities, player training, referees and other league employees on integrity measures, special software development and hiring. external consultants, said Dan Spillane, senior vice president of the NBA. But none of these leagues could quantify exactly the cost of integrity measures or new spending, since illegal sports betting has long been popular in the United States and other countries offer legal gambling bets.
Seeley said gaming companies should join the leagues so that both sides are encouraged to increase their attractiveness and profitability, he said.
"I can not think of another area in which a clbad of people is able to earn hundreds of millions of dollars with the proceeds of someone else, to put that party at risk, and to pay nothing, "said Seeley. "Some of the revenue that will be generated by gaming companies must be shared."
The NFL – even with the most popular betting sport in the US – claims never to have asked for such payments.
"We are focusing more on the integrity of the game and consumer protection," said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy.
The National Hockey League has devoted most of its energy to entering into direct agreements with gaming companies, including gaming giant MGM Resorts International, one of many transactions the leagues have concluded in the past year. last. These pacts include licensed bets with official league data, as well as the use of league and team logos in marketing and advertising.
"Instead of asking for legislation at the federal level or even at the state level, our approach has been to work directly with the industry," said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. "We think that, that is our intellectual property, our data, the video of our game, we have significant badets.If anyone wants to avail these badets or would like to use it to conduct its business, we are going to need to have a negotiation. "
The MLB and the NBA say they are striving to establish state fees and treat private companies in a parallel but independent way. David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, sees this as "an adjustment by the leagues to the political reality of the situation."
"I imagine that, as the market grows, they will look for different ways to monetize the public's interest in sports betting, maybe even some that they have not thought of yet" said Schwartz.
Last year, at least five states considered paying royalties to their leagues before deciding not to pay them. The leagues think they'll do better this year with more lobbying. Until this year, Missouri, New York State, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa and Mbadachusetts have introduced bills ranging from 0, 2% and 1% for the leagues.
This does not necessarily mean that fees are strongly in favor in these states. Legislators in several of these jurisdictions claim to have included fees in bills for the purpose of discussion, but are not convinced that they must be pbaded.
Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr. of the State of New York said the bill he was sponsoring was essentially a reintroduction of the unsuccessful bill last year. He did not sell the 0.2% fee that he would pay to the leagues, noting that Nevada, where sports betting has been legal for years, does not share his revenue with the leagues.
"Someone will have to justify integrity costs, in a credible way," he said. "The leagues say that it takes more effort to ensure the integrity of their matches, I understand, but I have to maximize the funding of our state.There is a cake and everyone wants its small share, and the state wants the bigger part. "
The Iowa state representative, Bobby Kaufmann, added 0.25% of the fee to one of his state's bills because "I wanted to give each of the stakeholders – the casinos , leagues, lottery and riders – their "dream bill". But I do not believe for the moment (the fees) has the votes.
"Iowa does not have professional sports leagues, but our casinos are located in 19 different locations," he said. "Integrity fees would simply divert money from Iowa to non-state entities."
State of Missouri Senator Paul Wieland opposes such charges, which appear in one of his state's bills.
"I do not think leagues have the right to pay fees," he said. "The leagues are in the sports and entertainment sector, and the casinos, in the gaming sector.If the leagues feel that they should get something, they should enter into individual agreements with the casinos to become the" official sports book ", as well as beer, companies do".
Illinois State Representative Mike Zalewski will not commit to paying integrity fees, but is sensitive to the position of the leagues.
"It's their product," Zalewski said. "They want to have their say."
Some lawmakers and state-game companies oppose the proposed fee being a percentage of all bets made, as opposed to a percentage of profits of gaming companies, which is a much smaller figure .
One idea the leagues have agreed on is the idea of federal regulation, preferring a single set of uniform rules to different laws in each state. A bill introduced at the end of last year that would require the US Department of Justice to establish minimum standards to be met by states in the provision of sports betting does not include royalties. But this does not explicitly prohibit them either, and the question of whether such payments are ultimately added should be at the center of the concerns or negotiations as it moves through Congress.
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Geoff Mulvihill's badociate editor in Philadelphia, Associated Press, contributed to this report.
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Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC
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More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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