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Seemingly ending months of tumult, the West Virginia Lottery Commission approved Sports Betting rules Wednesday — after rejecting changes that professional sports leagues contended were needed to preserve the integrity of their games.
“There’s been a whole lot of talk about integrity, integrity fees,” Lottery Director John Myers told the commission.
However, Myers said integrity has always been an integral part of the state Lottery, because, if players aren’t confident in the integrity of all Lottery games, including Sports Betting, they’ll stop playing.
“Loss of integrity for the Lottery could be very devastating for the state of West Virginia,” Myers said, referencing the roughly $500 million a year in Lottery profits that go into the state budget.
With that, Myers called on the commission to reject seven rule changes proposed by Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the PGA Tour.
Those included changes that would have required casinos to enter into exclusive contracts with the leagues for official game data, and to require league approval of any wagering other than on the final score of games. Known as prop bets, the wagering frequently involves betting on an individual player’s performance in games, which the leagues contend is more susceptible to fixes.
Afterward, John Cavacini, president of West Virginia Racing and Gaming Association, which represents the state’s four racetrack casinos, said he was relieved that the Lottery Commission had not acted to hurt the casinos, which he said have functioned as business partners with the Lottery for 24 years.
“After 10 months, I’m glad that we’ve reached this point and we can go back and try to run our businesses from the Sports Betting standpoint,” he said.
As the Legislature moved to pass legalizing Sports Betting in March, pending an anticipated U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning a federal law banning Sports Betting in most of the country, lobbyists for various professional sports leagues descended on the Capitol, seeking a share of betting profits in the form of an “integrity fee,” to be paid to the sports leagues.
Although the Legislature soundly rejected the idea, even before final passage of the bill, Gov. Jim Justice announced that, if the Supreme Court did overturn the ban, he would call a special session to amend the legislation to include the integrity fee.
Shortly after the Supreme Court struck down the ban in May, Justice aide Bray Cary brokered a heated daylong meeting with affected parties at Lottery headquarters, at the end of which Justice erroneously announced that a deal had been reached on integrity fees.
Then, for most of July and into the first week of August, the Governor’s Office held up the Lottery’s filing of emergency rules to allow Sports Betting to begin this fall, coming within two days of missing a deadline that would have delayed the launch until next spring.
Seemingly ending months of tumult, the West Virginia Lottery Commission approved Sports Betting rules Wednesday — after rejecting changes that professional sports leagues contended were needed to preserve the integrity of their games.
“There’s been a whole lot of talk about integrity, integrity fees,” Lottery Director John Myers told the commission.
However, Myers said integrity has always been an integral part of the state Lottery, because, if players aren’t confident in the integrity of all Lottery games, including Sports Betting, they’ll stop playing.
“Loss of integrity for the Lottery could be very devastating for the state of West Virginia,” Myers said, referencing the roughly $500 million a year in Lottery profits that go into the state budget.
With that, Myers called on the commission to reject seven rule changes proposed by Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the PGA Tour.
Those included changes that would have required casinos to enter into exclusive contracts with the leagues for official game data, and to require league approval of any wagering other than on the final score of games. Known as prop bets, the wagering frequently involves betting on an individual player’s performance in games, which the leagues contend is more susceptible to fixes.
Afterward, John Cavacini, president of West Virginia Racing and Gaming Association, which represents the state’s four racetrack casinos, said he was relieved that the Lottery Commission had not acted to hurt the casinos, which he said have functioned as business partners with the Lottery for 24 years.
“After 10 months, I’m glad that we’ve reached this point and we can go back and try to run our businesses from the Sports Betting standpoint,” he said.
As the Legislature moved to pass legalizing Sports Betting in March, pending an anticipated U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning a federal law banning Sports Betting in most of the country, lobbyists for various professional sports leagues descended on the Capitol, seeking a share of betting profits in the form of an “integrity fee,” to be paid to the sports leagues.
Although the Legislature soundly rejected the idea, even before final passage of the bill, Gov. Jim Justice announced that, if the Supreme Court did overturn the ban, he would call a special session to amend the legislation to include the integrity fee.
Shortly after the Supreme Court struck down the ban in May, Justice aide Bray Cary brokered a heated daylong meeting with affected parties at Lottery headquarters, at the end of which Justice erroneously announced that a deal had been reached on integrity fees.
Then, for most of July and into the first week of August, the Governor’s Office held up the Lottery’s filing of emergency rules to allow Sports Betting to begin this fall, coming within two days of missing a deadline that would have delayed the launch until next spring.
