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SportsTranscript
00:00We've heard that Cincinnati maybe would like to at least get some renovations to that Paul Brown Stadium they have there in downtown Cincinnati.
00:08How could Ohio potentially contribute to that?
00:12And do you think that it is reasonable to tax sports betting double from what they have now to get those bills?
00:18How will taxpayers feel about this?
00:21Yeah, I mean, who knows how the taxpayers will feel about this?
00:25I can't speak for the Ohioans that would be paying this off of sports betting.
00:29While it would be the sports books contributing to the state and then that.
00:33But this is crazy because it's Ohio Governor Mike DeWine for the second time proposing a doubling of the tax rate in Ohio.
00:42It went from in his last budget, the 2023-24 budget, he went to from 10 to 20%.
00:51And now he's proposing the next two year budget, which would jump it from 20 to 40%.
00:57And to your point, it would create between 150 and 180 million in additional tax funds.
01:04And part of which would go then to help pay for stadium upgrades or relocations or what have you in Ohio.
01:10And that's a major, you know, significant chunk of money at that point when you're talking about that.
01:16Is there appetite here from the legislator?
01:19I'm not sure. There was an outgoing senator in a special session in December who implemented or introduced a bill that would have dropped it back down to 10%.
01:29That didn't have enough legs in that small special session.
01:32But last year, a report on the future of gaming on Ohio came out.
01:36And the basic findings, both Republican and Democrat, were in agreeance saying, you know, that move to double the first time was premature.
01:47We need to watch it and make sure that the industry is OK, make sure that we're regionally competitive in that sense.
01:53So it's going to be interesting to see whether or not this just kind of slips through as a piece of the larger budget.
01:59Or if the legislators say, wait a second, we talked about this, we looked at this and said, well, this isn't smart.
02:05Let's pull this out. So, yeah, it's going to be kind of an interesting budget process to watch.
02:10It's certainly not the only budget that's proposed as tax hike this session.
02:15We see Maryland Governor Westmore doubling tax, proposing a doubling of the tax rate in Maryland from 15 to 30% because of a $6 billion budget shortfall.
02:26So, you know, this is not unusual. The industry knows these tax hike proposals are coming.
02:32They've passed to different states. We've got other states also looking at it.
02:35Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan have all kind of touched on it, thought about it, proposed it this year.
02:41And we'll see if any of them do end up passing. But it's certainly something the industry and onlookers of the industry are paying attention to.