Research Brief: State Legislative Update on U.S. Sports Betting & Online Gaming September 2020
As the sporting industry continues to reemerge from the Great Shutdown, it now faces its next challenge as it relates to local politics within the United States, including factors such as racial tensions, views of the use of police force, and the upcoming presidential election. Sports has always been viewed as a unifier – one where sports fans can escape the nonsense of the political world to enjoy a game. It appears that in the near term, those days are over.
In the middle of August, the NBA initiated a boycott following the shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Bucks began what turned into a short silencing of sports. This followed with the rest of the NBA and the WNBA taking a pause before their eventual return to the court after several internal and external discussions between the athletes, teams, and league on whether the season would even continue. The spillover then went into the MLB, NHL, and MLS in response to the initial action by the NBA. While sports betting operators have been banking on the return of sports based on the health and safety measures related to SARS-CoV-2, it was not foreseen that politics would become a deciding factor into another potential shutdown of sports.
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