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SportsTranscript
00:00 It feels like maybe four months ago or so you and I spoke about it.
00:08 We were thinking maybe like Alabama, for instance, might actually get their act together and
00:15 get something done before long.
00:17 And are we close now with Alabama getting it done?
00:21 Yeah.
00:22 So yeah, heading into the new year, I mean, you look at a map of legal sports betting
00:27 states.
00:28 There's a lot of people down there in the Southeast, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina,
00:33 Mississippi only has retail sports betting.
00:35 And so yeah, it's kind of when are these states going to get it together?
00:39 And it looked heading into the session that Alabama was going to do this.
00:43 And there's still certainly a chance that they do.
00:46 But you know, it's always started in the Senate and occasionally has passed the Senate and
00:50 gone to the House and the House vote, you know, it dies in the House.
00:53 Well, this year, House leadership took it by the reins and and led a sports betting
00:59 bill, a comprehensive gaming bill all the way through the House very quickly within
01:03 like two weeks of the session starting up.
01:06 And so that left a lot of people really optimistic about this.
01:09 And you know, the senator who has been the lead sponsor the last couple of years before
01:14 the session told me, you know, if they get it into the Senate, I'll get it through.
01:17 I'm confident we have the votes.
01:19 Well, last week after this happened, now he's simply optimistic that he's going to
01:24 get the votes.
01:25 There's been some new wrinkles that have emerged on the side of the bill, not not necessarily
01:33 anything to do specifically with the gaming bill, but maybe where the funds go or or just
01:37 the general opposition that you see on either side of the aisle.
01:42 And so this is a little bit less optimistic I am than I was, you know, right when it passed
01:48 the House when I thought, well, hey, you know, the Senate's done it before and the House
01:52 has done now gotten their piece of the puzzle done.
01:55 So we'll see where it goes.
01:56 I've got a couple sources telling me they're still happy with where it is.
02:01 You know, they're kind of thinking that maybe they dropped the casino package part of it
02:07 because there's, you know, seven casinos that could be legalized as part of the package
02:10 and you get the lottery because they're one of five states that don't have a lottery and
02:15 sports betting gets, you know, maybe lottery and sports betting get get shoveled through
02:19 still.
02:20 And that's just kind of where we're at is we're kind of seeing where the Senate irons
02:26 out these wrinkles and if anything happens and if they get it done, it could put some
02:31 pressure on Georgia, which is kind of, again, another state we're looking at to kind of
02:35 get things together because of that big hole in the southeast.
02:39 And right now it kind of looks like we're shaping up for a very similar end in Georgia,
02:43 where sports betting ends up kind of being a proxy war for other issues between the Republicans
02:48 and Democrats and it might die because of this this proxy war.
02:52 Again, who knows actually what happens.
02:55 This is, you know, politics at the state level are pretty much unpredictable no matter what
03:00 something can look like 100% shoe in and it falls apart because of some random thing that
03:05 happens behind the scenes.
03:08 But again, Alabama has made a step it hasn't before passing the house.
03:12 So there is certainly lots of optimism still out there that they can get it the last, you
03:16 know, 10 yards or or however you want to look at it on a football field.
03:20 Yeah.
03:20 (upbeat music)
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