Sports gambling is going to be a big legislative move come 2021. Once the election cycle is over, the sports gambling push by many states will happen. Why? It brings in all sorts of revenue for the state that they didn’t previously have. Illinois, a state that is broke, brought in sports gambling and legalization of marijuana to earn the state more money. More states will follow suit as they try to pay back the millions upon millions that COVID-19 will end up costing. FanDuel, DraftKings, and others are more than happy to help push these states in the right direction. Sadly, Wisconsin will not be one of them. In fact, Wisconsin might never get sports gambling.

This sounds depressing, but it is true. Wisconsin’s laws make things extremely tough to change course. If Wisconsin wanted to do this, they need to completely change the state’s constitution. That isn’t an easy thing to do federally and the same goes for the states. That’s one part of the impossible equation. The other part of the equation is eleven different Native American tribes own 26 casinos across the state. The state would have to work with each individual tribe to usher in sports gambling. This makes things very tough because it is likely each tribe will have a different request on how to have gamblers bet on sports.

Interesting graphic in today’s @WSJ on current status of sports gambling legalization across the country: pic.twitter.com/bfFquTEYw1

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 17, 2020

The above graphic will bum you out. Every state around us besides Minnesota has sports gambling in place. With how much tourism Wisconsin gets from sporting events, it would be a fucking layup to have the ability to gamble here. The casinos in Green Bay and Milwaukee are very easy to get to as well if people were visiting for Brewers, Bucks, or Packers games. It is a complete miss from the Badger state.

Let’s say the Wisconsin legislature wants to find a way to strike down the laws banning sports gambling. Odds are this will take a while, but if they do, I would expect different cities to actually work with tribes on figuring this out versus an all-encompassing decision. Let Milwaukee figure out how to do sports gambling with Potowamani. The same goes for Green Bay and Oneida or Madison and Ho-Chunk. That would be a way to cut through trying to appease all eleven tribes. That seems impossible. Cut that part out and focus on the cities where sports gambling would matter the most.

When you wonder why Wisconsin doesn’t have state gambling, you can point to this post for the answer.

Charlie.