Sports betting will begin early in NFL season after Connecticut Lottery picks vendors to run online gambling and sports betting venues
Football betting could begin next month now that the Connecticut Lottery Corp. has selected a Chicago gaming company to operate online sports betting and another gambling business already operating in the state to handle 15 betting sites.
Officials had hoped to launch Connecticut’s online gambling platform in time for the NFL kickoff on Sept. 9, but the lottery says gambling will begin early in the season. Connecticut’s two Native American Casinos are also preparing to open their own sportsbooks under Connecticut’s expanded gambling law enacted this year.
The lottery said Thursday that it will partner with Chicago-based Rush Street Interactive to run an online sportsbook and Sportech, which already runs off-track-betting outlets in the state, to operate retail gambling venues. Sportech will get a small percentage of online revenue for driving traffic, said Rob Simmelkjaer, chairman of the Lottery Board.
“We are confident we will be taking sports bets this NFL season, in the early part of it,” Simmelkjaer said. “Just a matter what exactly that date will be is still a bit open to consideration. We’re not sure.”
Rush Street Interactive operates in 10 states under brands such as PlaySugarHouse, BetRivers and RushBet. A Connecticut brand has not yet been selected. Simmelkjaer said Rush Street’s offer “was the strongest.”
Connecticut is expected to receive $170 million guaranteed revenue over the 10-year contract, “but we expect that to be just the start,” he said.
The retail sites will be at 10 Sportech sites in Hartford, Manchester, Milford, New Britain, New Haven, Norwalk, Stamford, Torrington, Waterbury and Windsor Locks. Five more sites, including an additional location in Hartford and one in Bridgeport, will be announced at a later date. Hartford’s XL Center is a possible location for the Hartford gambling venue.
It is still unclear when these locations will open for gambling.
Simmelkjaer said the site selections will bring sports betting to a maximum 30-minute drive for most Connecticut residents.
President Ted Taylor said Sportech is “primed and ready to establish an operation that includes sports, lottery and parimutuel gaming all under one roof and to promote the CLC online platform.”
The tribal owners of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun will play a key role in the gambling expansion.
Mohegan Sun said it’s prepared to open a temporary Mohegan Sun FanDuel Sportsbook that will launch “when the state allows” because regulatory work is still underway.
The casino’s Race Book is being renovated to become the Mohegan Sun FanDuel Sportsbook, with a planned opening of late 2021 or very early 2022. The venue has the potential to be “the largest FanDuel sportsbook in the United States,’' said Ray Pineault, chief executive officer of Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment.
The Mashantucket Pequot tribal owners of Foxwoods Resort Casino did not immediately comment.
Simmelkjaer said the Lottery expects to be “very competitive on a market share basis” with the casinos and their sports betting partners. He was not specific about the Lottery’s expectations for its market share.
The Lottery retail network can help bring in customers, he said. And when online lottery launches in the first three months of 2022, officials expect to draw in and keep gamblers who will play lottery games and bet on sports teams, Simmelkjaer said.
As for when online gambling will begin, that is not certain.
Paul Mounds, Gov. Ned Lamont’s chief of staff, said in March Connecticut gamblers could be wagering on NFL games from their cellphones by the start of the football season in September.
Simmelkjaer said Lottery officials “still hope we’ll end up quite close to that if not exactly at that point.”
“There are obviously a number of factors to get us to launch,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Interior must sign off on revenue compacts between Connecticut and the tribal operators of the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino, he said.
Lamont signed legislation May 27 legalizing sports betting and online gambling, prompting state officials to seek approval from the U.S. Department of Interior to amend the state’s revenue-sharing compacts with the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes.
The deal was the result of years of negotiations. Lamont initially estimated $50 million in revenue from new digital gambling platforms in his two-year budget he sent to the legislature in February.
Expanded gambling on the state level was set in motion in 2018 when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling lifted a federal ban on state authorization of sports betting. As other states, including New Jersey and Rhode Island, approved sports betting, Connecticut sat on the sidelines as officials tried to reach agreement with the state’s two federally recognized tribes who claimed exclusive rights to sports betting.
The legislation authorized the Connecticut Lottery Corp. to operate 15 sports betting locations, including sites in Hartford and Bridgeport. It also enacted a 13.75% tax rate on sports wagering, which was part of a gambling expansion package.
The new law will bring casino games such as poker, along with sports betting and the lottery, to cellphones and desktop computers, with the tribes and Connecticut Lottery competing against one another.
Stephen Singer can be reached at ssinger@courant.com.
