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SportsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - All right, now let's get back to the fun stuff for Pat,
00:05 or at least the stuff he covers, maybe not as much fun.
00:08 Maryland, let's start off with the state of Maryland.
00:10 There was a dicey online bill as far as casinos
00:14 were concerned in the legislature.
00:15 Did this thing get passed?
00:17 Did they push this through?
00:18 - Yeah, so it was up against a Monday deadline
00:21 to cross over from its chamber of origin.
00:24 And the house made some big adjustments last week
00:27 to create up to 30 online sports,
00:30 not sports, but online casino licenses.
00:33 And they met on Saturday
00:36 and they got it through on Saturday.
00:38 And so now it heads over to the Senate.
00:40 Now on the Senate side,
00:41 a similar bill did not cross over.
00:45 So you've got this chamber that's pretty inactive
00:49 in the sense of wanting to expand gaming,
00:52 to add any sort of extra revenue to the state coffers,
00:57 which is opposite of the house.
00:58 And so this is a, it's bigger than online gaming.
01:01 It's kind of just everything,
01:02 but the house really wants to add a huge chunk of money
01:06 to their blueprint for education fund.
01:09 I think they expect 900 million annually or so
01:12 from this online casino game.
01:14 So you've got the house that's super excited about it.
01:18 On the Senate side, they've got a balanced budget.
01:21 They don't wanna add revenue.
01:22 And they've, you know, Senate leadership has said,
01:24 we don't even wanna talk about online gambling.
01:28 So we're really interested to see where this goes.
01:30 Senator Ron Watson, who sponsored the Senate bill,
01:34 told me he's not very optimistic
01:37 that it will get any sort of movement.
01:39 However, he does hope
01:42 that maybe it can be adjusted a little bit.
01:44 And because it's a constitutional amendment,
01:46 no matter what happens,
01:47 Maryland voters will have a say on it in November,
01:50 if it gets through the legislature.
01:52 So basically what he's told me is
01:54 he hopes something can get through
01:55 that at least the voters can say,
01:58 yes or no, we want online gaming.
01:59 And then maybe we come back next year
02:01 and talk about the enacting legislation.
02:04 So it was a huge deadline on Monday.
02:06 They got it through.
02:07 So it is still alive.
02:08 We're still gonna see what happens the rest of the way.
02:11 But so far the appetite in the Senate is very low,
02:16 which could kind of completely alter it,
02:18 maybe completely kill it,
02:19 or again, maybe send it to the ballot
02:21 just as a simple question versus an all encompassing,
02:25 this is how it's gonna look question.
02:27 (upbeat music)
02:30 [MUSIC]