“Over time, gaming is going to come to Texas in all versions. Texas lawmakers do not meet again in regular session until 2025 and Patrick may run for re-election in 2026. “I don’t think right now they are enamored of casino gaming.

“The Republican electorate controls Texas,” longtime Republican consultant Bill Miller said. A gambling measure that would have allowed mobile sports betting passed the House last spring but never even got a vote in the Senate. Dan Patrick, who controls the state Senate and wields enormous influence over what bills even come up for a vote. There has been no bigger obstacle than Republican Lt. The Texas Republican Party passed a resolution that showed renewed opposition to casino gambling among party activists. Gaming measures have slowly picked up support, but a spending wave has yet to deliver a Texas-sized jackpot in a Legislature where resistance to legalizing casinos still runs deep. Casino magnate Miriam Adelson, who in November entered into an agreement to buy the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, donated $1 million to Republican Gov. Proponents have poured millions into political action committees and campaign donations. In Texas, any push for casino gambling is a matter of playing a potentially years-long game. I can't even imagine what that number would balloon to if you were able to do this from the comfort of your own home on a mobile device.” Any casino is already generating nearly $9 billion a year in California alone. Some kind of revenue split, Fogel said, could get a similar deal done in California.

Connecticut and New Jersey reached deals, Fogel said, because those states made agreements with the tribal casinos.

He said the tribes could be receptive if approached correctly. You've got to proactively come to them with an idea of how to get their support because without their support, this is going nowhere.” That's the trick here, what everybody needs to get their heads around. “Remember, the tribes don't need this,” Fogel said. There was no apparent movement in California this year to legalize sports betting after two competing measures, including one backed financially by Native American tribes, went down in flames in 2022 at the ballot box.īaird Fogel, a California attorney who works with the sports betting industry, said the key is getting the full support of the tribes.

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