Sports Betting in California is not yet legal and licensed but there is good news ahead. The Golden State, has tried to regulate online betting multiple times in the past and are likely to try again soon.

• Sports Betting App In California
• Sports Betting In California

1. Online Sports Betting at SportsBetting.ag. SportsBetting.ag is your ‘top spot’ for the best in sports betting excitement. No matter what your favorite game might be you’ll find it on the board along with a huge variety of sports and betting options.
2. 2020 Perspective For Legal California Sports Betting. Legislators are currently pushing for legal California sports betting sites. Right now, there is a bill ACA-16 that proposes an amendment to the California Constitution. That would allow California sports betting sites to be legal. However, this bill has met some issues.

Currently, there is no form of legal sports betting in the state of California. Since the federal law banning sports betting (PASPA) came to an end in May 2018, there have been a number of sports betting bills to bring legalization to the fore.

As the biggest state in the US by far, it’s inclusion in authorizing regulated sports wagering in California would mean an approximate $2.5 billion market.

However, the state is heavily dominated by tribal casinos and the political landscape is complicated, which means that the efforts to legalize online sports betting have met great opposition.

For now, all online betting is made on offshore casinos or on Daily Fantasy Sports, which is legal since it hasn’t been classified as real money gambling.

To bet on sports in California isn’t prohibited, it is not expressly regulated either, which makes it a grey area at best.

Online Sports Betting California Updates

While industry experts say that there won’t be any change in California sports betting legislation soon, there has been some developments recently.

When and if online will become legalized in the Golden State sportsbook operators such as BetMGM, DraftKings and William Hill, together with all the other major online sportsbooks, are likely to apply for CA online sports betting licenses.

BetMGM is one the fastest growing sportsbooks in the US and likely to enter California once there is a licensing process in place for sports gambling. Read our BetMGM California review.

FanDuel needs no further introduction. The kings of DFS and sportsbook (where legalized) are just like DraftKings almost guaranteed to enter the market once regulators authorize sports online.

DraftKings is widely known in California through their DFS product. Their sportsbook will most certainly be one of the first to open up for CA customers. Read our DraftKings California review.

William Hill is one of the most active sportsbook brands in the US with casino sportsbook partnerships all across the US. William Hill is one of the UKs oldest and most well established sportsbooks with over 100 years of history of sports betting. Read our William Hill California review.

California Sports Betting Hearing – January 8th, 2020

On January 8th, California took a great leap towards opening up the discussion about legal sports wagering in the Golden State. The Joint Assembly and Senate Governmental Organization Committees held a meeting in the state capital, where they invited industry experts to discuss what a legal California sports betting market could look like.

Research expert Chris Grove said that the California market could be worth $2.5 billion per year given that mobile sports betting would be included. However, Grove tweeted after the hearing that he could “feel” the obstruction in the room, and that he didn’t believe that California would legalize online betting in the near future.

Tribal Casinos File Sports Betting Authorisation Ballot Measure – November 2019

A coalition of 18 tribes put in a ballot measure that would legalize sports betting subject to state-wide approval. The measure would authorize sports betting and horse wagering at tribal casinos with a 10% tax rate on gross win. This measure would not include mobile betting.

Bill Dodd Sports Betting Bill Introduction – June, 2019

Senator Bill Dodd and Assemblyman Adam Gray introduced the constitutional amendment bill ACA 16, to the legislature. The bill would authorize sports betting subject to state-wide voter approval. The California Nations Indian Gaming Association opposed the regulation of sports wagering until their monopoly on card games was restored.

California Online Sportsbooks Amendment Proposal – July, 2017

Gray proposed an amendment to authorize betting in California provided that PASPA would be repealed. The amendment would be accepted subject to a two-thirds majority vote before it could be placed on a ballot for the next referendum.

Daily Fantasy Sports Authorization – January 2016

Adam Gray introduced the AB 1437 bill that regulated and authorized Daily Fantasy Sports. The bill passed unanimously in January 2016 and have regulated DFS since.

What Kind of Gambling is Legal in California?

As of now, there are a few options available for gambling in California:

• Cardrooms
• Charitable Gambling
• Pari-mutuel Horse Wagering
• Daily Fantasy Sports (contested wether legal or not)
• Indian Gaming
• Lottery

Cardrooms

Card rooms are very popular and within California state borders there are close to 70 card rooms venues (the number of card rooms vary over time but is stable between 60-70). These card rooms offer non-banked poker, Pai gow, Blackjack, Baccarat and Chinese poker and Panguingue.

Charitable Gambling

Non profit organizations can offer raffles, bingo games and poker nights.

Pari-mutuel Horse Wagering

Pari-mutuel wagering pools all bets made on a race and distributes winnings from the pool. This is currently the only way of real money sports betting in California.

Daily Fantasy Sports

DFS is not regulated as interactive gaming, and is therefore not prohibited in California. This makes it possible to bet on sports, without the element of real money. This is a good choice for players that are interested in other sports than horse racing.

Indian Gaming

Native American tribes can offer casino gambling and there are currently over 60 casino venues operated by California tribes which means that all casino gambling is operated by native American tribes.

California State Lottery

The lottery offers scratchcard and draw games. You can buy tickets to interstate Mega Millions and Powerball draws through the California state lottery.

Travel to Vegas

A more serious, betting alternative is to actually drive to Las Vegas which is a fairly close destination. As the gambling capital in the world, Vegas offers wagering on casino slots and table games and sports in their casino venues, and it is a simple weekend destination if you are interested in betting on sports in California.

The Future of Betting on Sports in California

There is an interesting battle going on for the sports betting legalization in California.

Both the state and the native tribes in the state are keen to get exclusive rights to sports betting, and the coalition of tribes that proposed a measure in November 2019 might be the closest option at the moment.

However, since they didn’t include mobile betting in their bill, the market size would not reach the $2.5 billion that is up for grabs. The question remains unanswered until further proceedings from the legislature.

As any bill would need a supermajority of two-thirds, there will be a lot of legislative work to form a consensus before we will see any real progress.

FAQ

Yes, gambling is legal at Tribal Casinos, card establishments and horse tracks. There is also a legal state lottery in California.

No. Pari-mutuel horse wagering and Daily Fantasy Sports are the only legal betting options in California.

As more US states are opening up for legal sports betting, land-based and online, California is likely to follow suit. A reasonable guesstimate is sometime in 2022 but could be earlier or later.

$2.5 billion

Yes, at tribal casinos

Yes

No

Yes, there is no legislation prohibiting DFS

Legalized sports betting has flourished across the country, and for a while it looked as though California, with the backing of the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball, would be the next state to embrace it.

America’s mighty sports leagues, however, just ran into a force they couldn’t defeat: California’s Indian tribes.

Sports Betting App In California

A proposal to amend the state Constitution, and usher in a bold new era of gambling, died in the Legislature on Monday. SCA 6, which would have allowed sports betting via cell phones and computers, was pulled off the table by co-author Sen. Bill Dodd one day before the legislation faced a pivotal committee vote.

The plan, which proponents said would have generated millions in new tax revenue, ran into fierce opposition from the state’s wealthy and politically powerful Native American tribes. The tribes have been pushing a far more limited version of sports betting that excludes online wagers and limits it to their casinos and a few horse racetracks.

Dodd’s announcement was a concession to “the power the tribes have gained over the last 20 years,” said Ken Adams, a gaming industry consultant in Reno. “Anybody who wants to get a bill through the Legislature is going to have to face that.”

Monday’s development leaves California as something of an outlier as sports betting gains momentum elsewhere. Nearly two-dozen states have legalized it the past two years.

The professional sports leagues, after years of warning their games could be corrupted, have made their peace with gambling, and are cutting deals to ensure they benefit financially. Even some organizations that usually oppose gambling believe Californians should be allowed to bet on sports openly.

“There’s a black market on it,” said Cheryl Schmit of the anti-gambling group Stand Up for California. “It’s much better if it’s out in the public.”

There’s also the issue of money. Californians already wager billions of dollars on sports, through offshore websites or illegally through bookies. Elected officials covet the tax revenue that legalized betting could bring to a state that’s had to plug a $54 billion deficit because of the coronavirus.

Dodd, who co-authored the measure with Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, said their bill could have produced $500 million a year in revenue for the treasury.

“It remains important that we lift this widespread practice out of the shadows to make it safer and to generate money for the people of California. I will continue to be engaged in the issue as we work toward 2022,” Dodd said in a prepared statement.

The tribes aren’t opposed to sports betting. But they want to keep it confined “to brick-and-mortar facilities,” said Anthony Roberts, chairman of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, which owns Cache Creek Casino Resort in Yolo County.

Roberts and other tribal leaders had other major objections to the Dodd-Gray proposal. The lawmakers’ bill would have put the tribes’ longtime gaming rivals, California’s card rooms, on a more secure legal footing to continue operating. The tribes see the card rooms as illegal and want to give the state greater authority to crack down on them.

The tribes are trying to get their proposal on the November 2022 ballot.

Why tribes oppose online sports betting

Both the Dodd-Gray and tribal proposals would allow sports betting inside tribal casinos and a handful of horse racetracks — including Cal Expo in Sacramento under the legislators’ plan.

Both would allow wagers on professional and college sports, although the tribes would prohibit bets on college games involving teams from California. Tribal officials say their public opinion surveys revealed voters aren’t comfortable with allowing bets on California college teams.

The major split was over online betting.

Dodd and Gray’s proposal would have allowed it. Experts say it’s where the money is. In other states where it’s legal, 85 percent of the action occurs online.

The sports leagues want online wagering, too. The NBA, Major League Baseball, the PGA golf tour and five of California’s professional teams — the Giants, A’s, Warriors, Dodgers and Angels — sent a June 1 letter supporting Dodd and Gray’s proposal and insisting that online betting be included.

“To ensure that consumers move away from the illegal market that exists today, any legal sports betting framework must include options for Californians to wager online and on mobile devices,” the group wrote. A separate letter from the NFL called mobile betting “a key component of moving the illegal market into a regulated setting.”

The tribes, however, say online sports betting would be nearly impossible to regulate — and could open the door to under-age gambling.

“There’s no way to know who’s using that hand-held device. It could be a child. That’s our biggest worry,” said Roberts of the Yocha Dehe tribe.

Tribal officials say online wagering — because it would take place off Indian lands — might be illegal under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, or IGRA, the federal law governing tribal casinos.

“The leagues, the industry, everybody’s pushing sports betting, but the tribes are still handicapped by IGRA,” said Victor Rocha, a consultant to casino tribes.

I. Nelson Rose, a consultant and legal expert on Indian gaming, said the tribes’ opposition is also rooted in practical business concerns.

Sports betting simply isn’t very profitable, no matter where the wagering occurs, Rose said. Tribes would rather keep their customers in their casinos dropping money into the slot machines.

Lucky lemmings slot machines for sale. “They don’t want people to stay home and bet on sports events,” said Rose, a professor emeritus at Whittier College. “They want people to come on in and play the slot machines and table games.”

The tribes have poured $8.5 million into their ballot measure, which would limit sports betting to casinos and racetracks.

Dodd offered a compromise that would have phased in online betting over several years. But the tribes weren’t persuaded. They acknowledge that online sports betting is probably coming eventually to California — but want to control when and how it arrives.

Having online betting “dictated to us is unacceptable,” James Siva, chairman of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, said during a recent webinar on tribal gaming issues.

“Whether online gaming is three years down the line, five years down the line, if it’s 10 years down the line, or if it’s not even in the conversation .. it needs to be a tribal decision.” Siva’s tribe, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, owns Morongo Casino Resort near Palm Springs.

Court opens door to sports betting

For decades, Nevada casinos held a monopoly on legal sports betting in the United States. A 1992 federal law outlawed the practice, although Nevada’s sports books, a fixture since the late 1940s, were grandfathered in, along with limited forms of sports betting offered in Oregon, Montana and Delaware.

All that changed when New Jersey legalized sports betting and challenged the constitutionality of the 1992 law. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with New Jersey. Soon there was a flurry of states joining New Jersey and enacting their own sports betting laws.

Currently, 19 states allow it in one form or another. Three other states plus Washington, D.C., have legalized sports betting but the laws haven’t gone into effect yet, according to gambling website SportsHandle.com.

After decades of resistance to the issue, sports leagues have begun signing marketing deals and other partnerships with gambling interests. Barely two months after the Supreme Court ruled, the NBA agreed to a dealing making MGM casinos the “official gaming partner” of the NBA and the WNBA. Major League Baseball made a similar deal with MGM a few months later.

The economic shutdown created by the COVID-19 pandemic creates an additional impetus for legalized sports betting. States “are desperate for money to balance their budgets,” Rose said.

However, sports betting might not be the revenue goldmine that state officials imagine.

For one thing, the tribes wouldn’t be obligated to contribute anything to the state’s coffers; any contributions would be subject to negotiation with the governor.

California’s tribal casinos, an $8 billion-a-year industry in California, are not subject to state income tax. They once contributed as much as $330 million a year to the general fund through compacts negotiated with the governor, but that amount has dwindled considerably after a judge ruled those payments constituted an illegal tax. They do provide about $170 million a year to a pair of state-run funds that help non-gaming tribes and operate programs for problem gamblers.

The racetracks’ winnings from sports gambling would be subject to taxation. But Richard Auxier, who’s studied sports betting for the Tax Policy Center and Urban Institute, said the state’s annual tax revenue would likely fall way short of the $500 million estimated by Dodd.

“It’s definitely not a windfall,” he said.

And without online wagering, the state’s take would be even smaller.

“You’ve got to go online because that’s where the money is,” he said.

California tribes wield political clout

For years, California Indian tribes struggled to make a living off gambling. The laws were unclear, and the tribes were reduced to dusty bingo halls and gambling tents that did little to lift them out of poverty.

Then came Proposition 1A, in 2000, a landmark event in the history of California gambling. With a resounding 65 percent of the vote, they won the right to open full-fledged, Vegas-style casinos.

The proposition also gave them a statewide exclusive right to operate slot machines, a casino’s most profitable asset. Four years later, when their exclusivity was challenged at the ballot box, they spent millions and crushed the effort.

Proposition 68 was born out of the state’s budget deficit. It said that unless the tribes surrendered 25 percent of their winnings to the state, racetracks and card rooms could operate slot machines.

The tribes and their allies spent more than $50 million fighting Proposition 68, about twice as much as their opponents. The initiative gained just 16 percent of the vote.

The tribes don’t always win. That same year, they failed to secure passage of Proposition 70, which would have given them the right to operate unlimited numbers of slot machines.

Still, tribal casinos in California have become a major force in California politics. They’ve donated millions to political candidates over the years.

“There’s a lot of money and there’s a lot of power there,” Dodd said last week, when he was still trying to broker a compromise with the tribes. “There’s a lot of sway with lawmakers, we get that.” The senator has received campaign contributions totaling $42,000 from Indian tribes since January 2019.

One influential tribe has stayed on the sidelines during this fight: the United Auburn Indian Community, owner of the ultra-successful Thunder Valley Casino near Lincoln, and no stranger to political skirmishes. The tribe’s spokesman, Doug Elmets, declined comment.

Just about every other big casino tribe joined in the effort to qualify the tribes’ proposal for the ballot, however. Yocha Dehe led the way with a $2 million contribution, followed by $1.5 million each from the tribal owners of the Graton Casino in Rohnert Park, the San Manuel Casino near San Bernardino and the Pechanga Casino in Temecula.

Until the coronavirus stay-at-home order was issued in March, the tribal coalition had spent $7 million collecting signatures and believed it was well on its way toward qualifying its proposal for the 2022 ballot. Although it still has until July 20 under state law to circulate petitions, it’s suing the state and demanding more time.

Tribes vs. California card rooms

Compared to tribal casinos, California’s approximately 70 card rooms are small players. Their annual revenue is barely 10 percent of what the tribes pull in. They wouldn’t be participants in legalized sports betting.

But their future has become the focus of an intriguing subplot in the fight over sports gambling.

Sports Betting In California

Leprechaun riches free play. It has to do with the somewhat arcane rules governing their operations.

Card rooms technically aren’t allowed to take bets. They have to contract with third-party companies whose employees act as “the bank” and take the bets. Those employees pay the card room a small fee at the beginning of every hand, depending on how much is wagered — the only money card rooms make from gambling. What’s more, the bank role has to be periodically offered around the table, to each customer.

For years Indian tribes have complained to state officials that most card rooms routinely ignore the regulations, particularly the requirement about offering the bank role around the table. They say the card rooms’ operations represent an intrusion on the tribes’ exclusive legal right to offer Vegas-style gambling in California.

Now they want to do something about that. The tribes’ ballot initiative would allow the state to close down anyone violating the rules — up to 30 days for repeat offenders — and give anyone the right to sue the card rooms for violations if the state won’t.

Dodd’s proposal would have fixed a gray area in the law to make clear that the card rooms’ games are legal. At the same time, last week he offered the tribes an olive branch by proposing stricter rules for the card rooms — for instance, requiring customers to accept the “bank” role periodically instead of merely having it offered to them.

The tribes rejected Dodd’s compromise.

For their part, card rooms have raised $7 million to fight the tribes’ proposal, which they view as an attempt to severely damage their viability.

“The reality is that our games are legal,” said Kyle Kirkland, owner of Club One Casino in Fresno and president of the California Gaming Association, which lobbies for the card rooms.

But he acknowledged that card rooms may be facing a difficult fight.

“Certainly the tribes are organized and influential and have talented people working for them,” he said. “I would hate to think it’s only whoever has the most money gets to dictate the rules.”

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