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SportsTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:05 All right, so wow, we got two significant updates today.
00:09 One of the positive, maybe one on the negative.
00:11 But regardless, states that we haven't talked about a ton
00:14 on the show.
00:15 In the South, we have mentioned Georgia a lot
00:18 as the possibility of them legalizing sports betting,
00:20 maybe 2025, '26.
00:23 Florida has it now going on.
00:26 What about Alabama?
00:27 What's the update there?
00:29 Yeah, so Alabama started their legislative session today.
00:32 And-- or not today, it was this week.
00:34 And they are going full bore at sports betting
00:38 as part of a bigger gambling package.
00:41 This isn't totally surprising.
00:43 We knew coming into the year, the Southeast
00:45 was going to be the place to watch for sports betting
00:49 legislation.
00:49 And as we've talked about, Mississippi
00:52 is moving very quickly through the House.
00:55 They got an online sports betting bill through.
00:58 And in Georgia, the Senate has an online sports betting bill
01:01 that plowed right through.
01:02 And now Alabama, I've got Senator Greg Alberton telling
01:07 me he's been a proponent in the years past.
01:09 He's introduced multiple bills.
01:11 And the House has not played ball.
01:12 Well, this year, Alberton told me the House is taking the lead.
01:16 They're introducing a bill this week
01:18 that they're aiming to get all the way through the House
01:21 by early next week.
01:23 And that gives the Senate plenty of time
01:25 to just do what they're going to do,
01:27 which will likely be passage because they've done it before.
01:31 There's a couple of wrinkles in this because there
01:36 is a lot of opposition.
01:37 Alabama is one of five states without a lottery.
01:40 So that's included in the bill.
01:42 It's simply a lottery.
01:43 It creates a gaming commission, five casino gaming sites,
01:48 allows the governor to work with the Porch Creek
01:52 Band of Indians to amend their compact to allow for gaming.
01:58 And there's all sorts of wrinkles in there.
02:00 And of course, sports betting is included in that.
02:02 And any one of those things can get stripped at any time.
02:05 There's some sources who say it could just
02:08 be whittled down to purely sports betting or purely
02:10 lottery.
02:11 So it's going to be something to watch.
02:13 It seems like having the House leadership behind it
02:17 and previous Senate passage that this year could be the year
02:22 something gets done in Alabama.
02:24 Now, it does require--
02:25 because no gaming is allowed in the Constitution of Alabama.
02:30 So it will require voter approval as well at the polls.
02:35 But by all accounts, everything seems
02:37 pretty smooth at this point.
02:41 Senator Albritton again said, any sort of gaming
02:45 is kind of a big deal because you've
02:46 got a lot of lobbyists and businesses in Alabama
02:49 who are going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't want
02:51 big casino companies or FanDuel or DraftKings coming in
02:55 and being a big political, as he called it,
02:58 mule and mucking up a well-oiled machine
03:01 that they've got down there.
03:03 But I think that's kind of an inevitability at this point,
03:07 especially if Georgia and Mississippi can
03:09 cross over a line at some point here this year.
03:13 (upbeat music)
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