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00:00What's the very latest here?
00:07Is there any positivity heading into the second quarter of the year here in Georgia?
00:11It really doesn't seem like it, Craig.
00:13You know, Georgia, as you said, there were moments of optimism and positivity down in
00:19the Peachtree State, but, you know, it came down to the end of the session.
00:23It got to, you know, what could have been its final step, the House floor.
00:27Well, it didn't get to the House floor, it got to the Rules Committee, which would then
00:31send it to the House floor on March 29th, and it didn't get there.
00:36Despite multiple Rules Committee meetings on that last day of session, they didn't push
00:40it over the edge.
00:41And so I just published yesterday as kind of a debrief of what happened in Georgia and
00:47made it not happen.
00:51And so that's on legalsportsreport.com.
00:53In short, it just sounds, again, like politics got in the way, which coming into the session,
00:59we knew was going to be an issue.
01:01But it's almost kind of a little different than we've seen in previous years.
01:05Previous years, we've seen bipartisan support of sports betting fall apart because of, you
01:10know, a different issue.
01:12And so then one party digs their heels in and says, we're not going to play ball.
01:16Well, this year, it just seemed things got, you know, kind of bogged down because of,
01:22you know, various leadership challenges.
01:24And again, something we'll talk about in a second about constitutional amendments.
01:29But the Senate, overwhelmingly bipartisan, sent over a really nice proposal.
01:35And the House, they didn't want to play ball.
01:39You know, in the House, there was less appetite for this constitutional amendment, which some
01:44lawmakers believe is needed, while some other lawmakers believe that sports betting can
01:49just kind of simply slot in as a lottery game.
01:53And so that difference was huge.
01:55I've got multiple sources saying the committee assignment in the House doomed it from the
01:59get-go because the chair of that committee was, you know, not the right person to kind
02:05of lead the charge.
02:06And then another source on the record, you'll read about it, blames the House speaker and
02:12said that, you know, they laid out a bunch of things, they put the goalposts out.
02:17But Marcus Woodrow, who was leading the charge in the House, met all those goals.
02:22And then the House speaker moved the goalposts or, as the source says, completely removed
02:28the end zone.
02:29So, you know, there's all sorts of different parts here that kind of went wrong.
02:34And, you know, again, there were huge moments of optimism in Georgia to get it done this
02:39year.
02:40It, of course, ultimately didn't happen.
02:43And I think, again, in a couple of states we're going to be talking about next, you
02:46know, it's kind of just chipping away at it at this point in these states that are left
02:50and need to legalize.
02:52So is next year the year?
02:56Who knows?
02:58As we've discovered in all sorts of states, most recently Kentucky, it could kind of just
03:01come out of nowhere and surprise you.
03:03And I think that might be the case in the future in Georgia.