Sports betting is officially coming to Maryland after voters gave their approval on election day. There is a lot of work that legislators need to do to work out the regulations that will government the sports betting industry.
As of now, it looks like Maryland bettors will get access to legalized betting by the summer of 2021.
Earlier this year, a rough draft of a sports betting bill was passed before further deliberations were cut short by the pandemic.
This prompted the legislators to ask Maryland residents to vote on the expansion of gambling in the state.
Betting revenues in the state are expected to be anywhere between $20 to $40 million. Most of the sports betting tax revenues generated by the state will be injected into the education sector as per the rules ratified by the General Assembly.
WMAR-2 News
Sen. Craig Zucker from Montgomery said that it was important to find alternative sources of revenue that would plug the educational budget deficit in a pandemic that has disabled most of the economy. He added that the possibility of sports betting getting legalized and being made available at horse racing tracks and casinos in Maryland was now higher than before.
Maryland will need to work out whether they are going to push forward with just land based sports betting or also offer online sports betting.
Betting stakeholders in Maryland are positive that things will fall into place quickly. Gordon Medenica, the state Lottery Director said legislators have spent close to two years crafting draft betting regulations and the framework is in place to move forward with how sports betting operations will be rolled out in the future.
Medenica said that horse racing tracks and casinos across the state were ready to kick off sports betting operations quickly thanks to their existing relationships with top sports betting operators in the market. It will be interesting to see if Maryland will legalize online and mobile sports betting given the fact that states like New Jersey tend to generate the bulk of their sports betting revenues for online bets.
Louisiana and South Dakota have also legalized sports betting along with Maryland. With so many states legalizing sports betting in recent months, more than 25 states in America will have legalized sports betting up and running by the end of 2021.
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