The casino industry’s chief lobbying voice in Washington, D.C., sees an opportunity in reports this week that the NHL is ready to grant an expansion team to Las Vegas.
For Geoff Freeman, president of the American Gaming Association, a major league hockey franchise in Las Vegas will offer further proof of two things: broad acceptance of gambling and another reason to eliminate the federal ban on sports betting in most states.
Both causes are of great importance to his organization.
Freeman told reporters on a conference call today that the apparently impending arrival of Las Vegas’ first major league sports franchise “reflects a rapidly evolving view of gaming as an important, mainstream segment of the broader economy.”
He said the industry has been widely embraced by American voters and that, when examining markets where professional sports and casinos coexist, concerns are generally “widely overblown and not based on fact.”
Freeman’s group recently released an analysis showing 81 percent of NFL teams play home games within an hour’s drive of a casino, which the association offered as evidence against claims that professional sports and casino gambling aren’t compatible.
Yet sports betting in particular remains largely illegal outside Nevada because of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, a 1992 federal law that the gaming association wants repealed.
If access to sports betting is the issue, Freeman said, critics should note that all athletes have easy access to illegal gambling, a problem Nevada’s highly regulated market is well prepared to combat.
“A legal, regulated sports betting market brings much-needed transparency in order to spot illegal activity,” Freeman said. “Nothing threatens the integrity of sports more than the illegal sports betting marketplace.”
He said the major leagues’ views on sports betting were shifting. That could aid the association’s argument that it’s time to replace the federal ban with a better approach.
It’s not clear exactly when that might happen, although a recent Congressional hearing took up the issue of allowing sports betting nationwide. Freeman has said he thinks the next president will address the matter, and the association has so far focused on education and consensus-building.
“The fact is, we have an extraordinarily large black market for sports betting in this country,” Freeman told the Las Vegas Sun in a previous interview. “It’s important that all laws that were passed in 1992, 1982, 1962 — we take a hard look at these. How are they working? ... I would suggest, in the case of PASPA, we would be hard pressed to find it is working.”
Of course, the NHL isn’t the only major league that may soon come to Las Vegas. The Oakland Raiders are also eyeing Southern Nevada and a proposed 65,000-seat domed stadium that Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Majestic Realty Co. want to build.
The move, however, would need to clear a number of significant hurdles, including securing a significant amount of public money and approval from 24 of 32 NFL team owners.
The Las Vegas hockey team, meanwhile, already has a home: T-Mobile Arena — the recently debuted Strip venue co-owned by MGM Resorts International.
Freeman told reporters today that the NHL’s decision “sends a strong message” but that it would be up to each league to determine if the Las Vegas market fits their needs. Repealing the federal sports betting restrictions would also help by continuing to make Las Vegas’ gambling offerings mainstream, he said.
Freeman also indicated that he doesn’t think Las Vegas sports books should be prevented from taking bets on the local hockey team.
“If you want to ensure the integrity of sports, you are more likely to do that with a regulated and transparent marketplace,” he said on today’s conference call.
Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman A.G. Burnett told the Sun this week that he had not had any conversations with the NHL about removing the new team’s betting odds from state casinos. But the league could still raise the issue before the team’s first season, which would begin next year.