Gambling options in California have been impacted once again as a ban has come into effect for sweepstake gaming, with tribal gambling companies pushing back hard on the industry.
With gambling in California limited to tribal nations and some fantasy sport games, the ban on sweepstakes will only add more frustration for an area of America that has a strong demand for gambling and iGaming services.
Recent reports have stipulated that both the Indian Gaming Association (IGA) and California Nations Indian Gaming Association (CNIGA) have come out strongly to defend legislation to dismantle growing sweepstakes-style casinos.
The tribal nations are looking to protect their sovereign rights and gaming exclusivity in the state as part of a major escalation in the fight against unregulated online gambling.
According to Sam McQuillan, head writer at Legal Sports Report who spoke on News Wire with Craig Hish, tribal casinos will only want gambling to occur in the state under their own terms – and he broke down the rise of sweepstake casinos in the state that emerged due to the strict laws in place.
“You have these sweepstake operators who are operating in the state of California where they are offer online casino games and sports betting games to customers.
“They offer the option to play for free but most don’t do that, most are exchanging real money like you would on a sportsbook. They’ve been able to do that whilst skirting the law by calling themselves sweepstake operators.
“Now you have lawmakers who are opposed and want to ban that practice and make it explicitly clear that we see as illegal gaming and we don’t want that to continue.”
At the same time, sources at KCRA 3 have claimed that California Attorney General Rob Bonta is soon expected to deem all online fantasy sports platforms illegal in the state, taking away an avenue to sports betting for customers.
The news site also are of the opinion that the decision ‘could put billions of dollars at risk for the companies that have been operating in the state for a decade’.
Millions of sports fans reportedly partake in fantasy sports and they have been doing so for well over a decade. Yet, fantasy sports remain a ‘grey area’ in a state where gambling is illegal.
Given it is not a traditional form of gambling that you would find in a traditional sportsbook site, users pay to enter a contest and can win money or a prize depending on the professional athletes they pick and how well the athletes perform, be it across American Football or Baseball, for example.
While it is current news, it has been something debated for the past few years, dating back to the 2022 election in which voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure to legalise online sports betting. A year later, republican State Senator Scott Wilk sent a letter to the California Department of Justice requesting the legal opinion on daily fantasy sports.
Due to the nature of the game, it blurs the line between game and gambling as debated by Wilk. He noted in his letter that under California law, no one may operate “any game of chance” without the required federal, state and local licenses, in which he wrote “daily fantasy sports appears to be a game of chance not otherwise permitted by the laws of California.”
If the reports are true and the future of fantasy sports betting is to be removed, that will only add fuel to the fire for players in the state. As claimed by McQuillan, there is a huge demand for betting and that could lead to pressure to legalise it in the future.
“The more you il-legalise different gambling mechanisms that look to skirt around that (the laws), the more the pressure builds and there is a huge demand for sports betting. That’s a reason, I’m sure, if Fano and Sweepstakes were legal in California that sweepstakes would not be focused on at all, it wouldn’t be a huge market for them.
“We’ve only seen the big states like Texas, California and Florida where there’s only one sports betting option that’s legal, those are the biggest areas for sweepstakes. But now you have lawmakers actually taking action trying to push them out, it wouldn’t only make them illegal, it would also ban payment processors, financial institutions and even celebrities from promoting these platforms.
“Sweepstake operators are trying to make this argument that this is going to hurt legitimate businesses and have a bigger and wide reaching effect. I’m not sure how much that will matter to lawmakers that are very much loyal to the tribes.
“For sweepstakes, this looks like the beginning of the end but with legalised gambling, this should only push the focus more on now we’ve gotten rid of these illegal operators how do we make sure we have legal options because there’s officially a demand.”
