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Legislation to permit sports betting in Kansas experienced a rollercoaster ride on Tuesday (March 29) that leaves its status uncertain as a key legislative deadline approaches this week.
Momentum had been building behind the effort to pass House Bill 2740, following a House Federal and State Affairs Committee hearing of the bill last week, with committee leaders expecting to pass the bill during another hearing Tuesday.
Instead, the meeting ended without a decision either way, following unsuccessful attempts to overhaul the bill’s language.
As introduced by the committee, the bill allows for 12 mobile sportsbook operators to enter a market regulated by the Kansas Lottery, with each of the state’s four commercial casinos receiving three mobile skins.
In addition, the casinos would be able to enter into marketing agreements with up to 50 businesses, including professional sports teams, to install wagering kiosks at retail facilities.
However, following a series of minor amendments to the bill during Tuesday’s hearing, Republican Representative Francis Awerkamp proposed a sweeping amendment that would instead see the Kansas Lottery become the operator of sports wagering, cutting out the casinos and instead seeing the lottery approve interactive platforms.
“The main difference would be, of course, with it being operated solely by the Kansas Lottery, all sports wagering revenues would be retained by the state, and there would be no contracts with any casino managers for the operation of sports wagering,” Awerkamp said.
“If we let the casinos contract it out, we get a small percentage of the money,” he added. “If we let the Kansas Lottery put out an RFP contracted out, we get all of it.”
The debate between a lottery-centric model and a casino-controlled market has been one of the dominant themes in legislative discussions over sports betting in Kansas in recent years.
Although the amendment failed, the meeting ended abruptly as a result of another amendment proposed to the bill, which would have removed language allowing the Kansas Lottery to begin selling lottery tickets online.
Committee chairman John Barker, a Republican, proposed the amendment, saying that the sale of online lottery sales was unrelated to sports betting, and he was asked to propose the amendment by “my leadership.”
But the amendment failed after other committee members pointed out that the bill’s fiscal note projected almost $11m in lottery transfers to the state in the first year of the iLottery program.
At the end of the meeting, a motion was made to reconsider the amendment, which again failed, at which point Barker quickly ended the meeting without returning to the bill itself.
“I am surprised,” he said. “We are adjourned.”
Later in the day, however, the House moved Senate Bill 84, a shell bill that the Senate approved last year, from the Federal and State Affairs Committee to the Committee of the Whole, in a procedural move potentially setting up a floor vote at some point this week.
The legislature’s “first adjournment” is scheduled for Friday (April 1), which serves as the effective end of the regular session, after which the only bills considered by the legislature are bills vetoed by the governor or omnibus spending bills.
Any sports-betting bill would need to be approved by both chambers of the legislature before Friday’s deadline.
