The bills offer a range of approaches to handling sports wagers. Some would give casinos in Bangor and Oxford permission to offer sports betting, while others would grant that permission to the state’s American Indian tribes. Other measures would establish regulations for placing bets online.
If any of the bills becomes law, Maine would be the second state in New England and the eighth in the country to legalize sports betting. States that have already done so include Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Mississippi, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, as well as the District of Columbia.
About 30 other states have bills in the works, following a May 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned a federal law passed in 1992 that prohibited states from legalizing betting on sports.
“The general idea is to establish a regulatory structure for sports betting in Maine after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling this past spring,” Christine Kirby, a spokeswoman for Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, said in a statement. “It also gives the Gambling Control Board significant authority to regulate sports betting.”
Source: GMB
