Will Massachusetts legalize sports betting by the time the legislative session expires?

Colin A. Young
·2 min read
Photo illustration of the Draft Kings app on an iPhone.
Photo illustration of the Draft Kings app on an iPhone.

Will Massachusetts legalize sports betting by the time the legislative session expires July 31? Place your bets now because the conference committee that will try to hammer out a compromise bill will meet Thursday to get down to business.

State Reps. Jerald Parisella, Aaron Michlewitz and David Muradian and state Sens. Michael Rodrigues, Eric Lesser and Patrick O'Connor, R-Weymouth, are due to huddle virtually at 2 p.m. Thursday to kick off the negotiations. Both branches have passed bills to authorize sports betting, but they took vastly different approaches.

The conference committee will have a few significant issues to resolve.

  • The House sports betting bill would allow wagers on college sports, but the Senate's would not.

  • The Senate bill has rigid restrictions on sports betting advertising, marketing and the use of credit cards that the House bill did not include.

  • And the branches chose vastly different tax rates – revenue from in-person bets would be  taxed at 20% in the Senate bill and 12.5% in the House bill, while money brought in from online or mobile bets would be taxed at 35% under the Senate framework and 15% under the House plan.

More on sports betting: Odds, picks and predictions

"The Senate bill is a paternalistic bill, it has all these anti-gaming protections so you don't get hooked on gaming. But you leave those two things to the black market," House Speaker Ron Mariano, D-Quincy, said last month, referring to the ability to bet on the NCAA basketball tournament and college football bowl games. "It's hard for me to figure out what the purpose of the Senate bill is."

Senate President Karen Spilka, who has been cool to the idea of legalizing sports betting, said she would have voted to support her chamber's sports betting bill if it had gone to a roll call vote because of its "very strong" protections against problem gambling.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: House-Senate conference committee kicks off sports betting discussions