The Wisconsin Legislature is considering a bill to legalize online sports gambling. (Getty Images)

A bipartisan bill to legalize online sports betting in Wisconsin is speeding through the state Legislature.

After being introduced in late October, the Assembly and Senate versions of the legislation received public hearings this week, and on Thursday the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Revenue voted 5-3 in favor of advancing the bill to the Senate floor. 

Under the Wisconsin Constitution, any gambling must be managed by the state’s federally recognized Native American tribes. Sports betting was first allowed in the state in 2021, but all of those bets had to be made in person at tribal casinos. The proposed new legislation would allow online sports betting using a “hub and spoke” model in which the servers running the betting websites and apps are housed on tribal land. 

The structure is similar to the state of Florida’s agreement with the Seminole tribe, which owns and operates the Hard Rock Casino brand. 

Proponents of the bill, including a bipartisan mix of legislators, representatives of the tribes and the state’s professional sports teams, say that hundreds of millions of dollars in unregulated online sports bets are already being made in Wisconsin, so legalizing the practice will kill the black market while providing tax revenue and consumer protections. 

But critics say the Legislature is rushing through a bill that could face legal hurdles and ignoring the ways in which online sports betting can be especially harmful for people with gambling addictions. 

Wisconsin’s legalization move comes seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018. So far, 39 states have legalized sports betting and 32 of them have allowed online or mobile sports bets. 

Wisconsin would be the first state to legalize online sports gambling since North Carolina and Vermont did so in June 2023. Only now, Wisconsin’s legislators are doing so amid a national reassessment of the country’s relationship with sports gambling. Ads for apps such as FanDuel and DraftKings are ubiquitous. Both the National Basketball Association  and Major League Baseball are dealing with the fallout of player gambling scandals. Questions have arisen about the healthiness of frictionless sports gambling for the predominately young, male users of these apps. 

“American culture, and American sporting culture is trying to adjust to this new widely legalized moment,” Dr. Jason Lopez, a professor at UW-Madison who studies sports media and gambling, told the Wisconsin Examiner. 

If the bill is passed and signed into law, sports betting wouldn’t be immediately legalized. The state and tribes would need to renegotiate their existing gaming compacts and then those new agreements would need approval from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

But, Rep. Tyler August (R-Walworth), said at Tuesday’s Senate hearing, the state should get moving before the illegal betting market grows too large. 

“I don’t gamble, but I think  it’s the right thing to do, based on some of the data that we’ve seen,” said August, whose district is right on the Illinois border, which residents can easily cross to place online bets. “This is an activity that’s not declining, it’s increasing. And I think that it’s appropriate for us to deal with this now before it gets even bigger.”

Jim Crawford, attorney general of the Potawatomi tribe, said an estimated $1 billion in illegal online sports bets were made by Wisconsinites last year. At the hearing, tribal representatives highlighted the services tribal governments could improve with the increased sports betting revenue. 

“While online gaming is currently the wild west in Wisconsin with no regulations or protections for consumers,” Crawford said. “It does not have to be. This bill is a first step in ensuring that consumers will be able to have a legal, regulated and protected way of participating in this extremely popular technology.”

Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), one of the bill’s co-authors, said he doesn’t believe the bill will put gambling addicts at further risk. But Sens. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken), Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) and Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) voted against moving the bill out of committee. Jacque said at the hearing he was worried about the recent gambling scandals in professional sports and the risk of gambling addiction. 

“This would allow them to place bets by their device anywhere in the state, as opposed to going on site at a casino, at a reservation,” Jacque said. “I would say, from an opportunity standpoint, that potentially could feed more into addictive behavior.” 

Noah Henderson, the director of the sport management program at Loyola University Chicago, said the frictionless nature of online sports betting is one of its challenges. 

“Brick and mortar sports books provide a cooling-off period, when people are trying to chase losses, if they have to get in their car again and go to the sports book, they might realize halfway there that they’re acting impulsively,” Henderson said. “It’s easier for families to see the signs of gambling disorder or problem gambling when individuals have to leave the home, right? It’s a lot easier to hide problem gambling or a gambling disorder when it’s only on a mobile device, where there’s no absences, they’re not leaving the house more than they normally do.” 

Henderson said there’s not much Wisconsin’s Legislature can do about the societal acceptance of legalized sports betting and a culture that has fully absorbed the promotion of gambling. 

“It is incredibly common to see on the pre-game show, the halftime show, the best bets, the best live bets, the best parlay combinations. So I think that there’s only so much Wisconsin can do to stop that, to stop sports gambling from being the culture of young men — predominantly young men — watching sports,” he told the Examiner. 

So, according to Henderson, the state is faced with a choice between legalizing and facing the broader cultural changes head-on while getting the tax revenue or hoping that prohibition disincentivizes sports betting. 

“I think that there might be a bit of harm reduction in this public policy where, if we keep mobile sports wagering outlawed in this state, it’s not going to curtail the sweeping normalization of sports gambling that we’ve seen,” Henderson said. “That’s at a national level. So Wisconsin has two options, which is to not allow it, and hope that the lack of resources for legal sports gambling incentivizes young men and women not to partake in this. But at the end of the day, there’s still a market and a need … they would rather regulate and tax it for consumer protection and to grow a tax base off of it and not have sports gambling happening without being able to derive some tax benefit from it that can go towards gambling education, public schools, or whatever else Wisconsin’s government deems important.” 

One organization that is against the bill is the Sports Betting Alliance, which represents the major online sportsbooks. 

The bill uses the federal Indian Gaming Regulation Act as a mechanism to allow online bets in Wisconsin. That law allows tribes to license their gaming operations out to third parties so long as the tribe gets 60% of the net revenue. 

Damon Stewart, an attorney for the alliance, said at the hearing that the revenue sharing requirement would make it too expensive for the most popular apps to partner with the tribes and provide their already existing apps and infrastructure. He also said he believes the law as currently written runs afoul of federal law. 

“We support the goal of legal online sports betting in Wisconsin. We want to work with the tribes. We want to partner with them,” Stewart said. “But this bill will only result in limited choices for customers. There’s no national brands, no chance for all the tribes to actually participate in the market, no ability to make an effective dent in the illegal market that already exists and years of litigation that will hold up the implementation of the law.” 

Stewart argued in his testimony that without the name recognition of the most popular apps, the legalization effort may not effectively kill the black market. Henderson said it’s possible for the tribes to develop their own infrastructure, but it’s easier to let the bigger companies manage the administration if the revenue sharing deal can be worked out. 

“This is probably a losing endeavor for those big sports books to enter a mid-sized sports gambling market with already pretty challenging margins,” Henderson said. “Especially when sports books enter a new market for sports gambling, there’s a lot of upfront costs that come with advertising that usually these businesses and markets take several years to even become profitable with more favorable regulations in place.” 

“Legislation can be amended. It doesn’t seem like this is the only formulation of it, but I think revenue sharing can definitely happen,” he continued. “I just don’t know if the 60-40 model makes sense for retailers to want to come in. Otherwise it would just be much like Florida, where tribal governments would have to build the infrastructure on their own or purchase white light label sports gambling software and pass it off as their own.”

In his testimony, Stewart called for the Legislature to slow down the process and get it right the first time. 

“I want to be respectful. It’s just my perception that with a bill dropped last week, two hearings this week, it does seem to be, compared to a lot of legislation, a bit of a rush,” Stewart said. “And on the topic of this complexity, a topic of this importance that affects a lot of citizens of the state, I would hope it would be seen as reasonable as asking to let us have the chance to work with the tribes.” 

The tribal representatives testifying said they were prepared to move forward without the big name apps. 

“We certainly appreciate the Sports Betting Alliance’s support of the goal of this legislation,” Crawford said. “But it’s also something that is a little bit concerning to us, that they are sort of implying that we don’t have the capability of operating statewide mobile sports, which, if you’ve ever been to our facility and to our retail sports betting, you know that we do a pretty good job, and the customers are happy. And so we look forward to doing that on a statewide basis, on a regulated basis, where the consumers are protected and they are generating revenues for the state of Wisconsin that stay in the state of Wisconsin.”

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Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) attacks the Assembly Democrats in a floor speech on Tuesday, Oct. 14. (Screenshot/WisEye)

During an Assembly floor session in which most of the bills passed on voice votes that were unanimous or nearly so, the chamber’s Democrats took the occasion Tuesday to make pointed arguments with amendments that were quickly quashed.

Republican lawmakers lashed back with accusations of politics and grandstanding, while Democrats retorted that they were raising issues relevant to their constituents that the GOP majority has ignored.

On a bill that includes a pilot program for enabling video communications between callers and public safety call centers, Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) offered an amendment to restrict the video recordings from being shared.

“My amendment tightens the guardrails on the pilot program to clarify that no real-time video could be shared with private contractors or masked federal agents with ICE or any other actors not relevant to the incident being reported,” Phelps told lawmakers.

In recent door-to-door visits with constituents, “most of them have been saying they want to protect and expand Medicaid, public schools, they’re worried about the economy,” he added. “Zero percent said that they want more government surveillance.”

The amendment was rejected 54-42.

“What is the bar?”: Wisconsin Legislature divided as it passes resolution honoring Charlie Kirk 

The official theme of the day — set as always by the Republican caucus — revolved around public safety, and was cued up with the first hour set aside to honor first responders from each of the state’s 99 Assembly districts.

On the floor, the Assembly passed bills to ban gadgets that can automatically hide or swap out a driver’s license plate (SB 66); increase the penalties for impersonating police, fire fighters and other emergency service personnel (AB 136); punish people who harass search and rescue dogs (AB 239); increase the penalty for human trafficking (AB 265); and require drivers to move over for disabled vehicles on the highway just as they must already give a wide berth to a stopped emergency vehicle (AB 409).

The body also concurred — on a voice vote and without debate — with a Senate bill that split lawmakers on party lines in the 2023-24 legislative session and was vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers.

The legislation, SB 25, would shield police officers involved in the fatal shootings of civilians from judicial investigations under Wisconsin’s John Doe law if prosecutors decline to issue charges unless new evidence is produced. The bill passed a divided Senate in March.

Amendments as talking points

On Tuesday, disagreement only broke open when Democrats used the amendment process to highlight some of their policy priorities that weren’t otherwise up for discussion.

Each time, Rep. Kevin Petersen (R-Waupaca), filling in in the speaker’s chair, ruled the amendments out of order, and the Assembly Republicans agreed in party-line votes.

The first of the Democratic amendments was on SB-183, which came to the Assembly after passing the Senate earlier Tuesday.

The legislation increases the Medicaid reimbursement for emergency medical services when drivers arrive to pick up a patient but the person ends up forgoing a trip to the hospital.

Rep. Alex Joers (D-Waunakee) offered an amendment to increase the state budget by $69.2 million to offset increases in the state’s cost to run the federally funded FoodShare program.

Rule changes that Republicans enacted in the tax-cut and spending-cut megabill that President Donald Trump signed July 4 set an “impossible standard” for Wisconsin to meet, he said. “We want to prevent another multi-million dollar heist by Trump and his followers.”

When the vote came on the bill itself — which passed by a unanimous voice vote — the bill’s Assembly author, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) angrily scolded the Democrats.

“I’m a little bit taken back by the amendment that was thrown on to this bill,” Kurtz said. “I understand you want to get your political points, that’s fine. But there’s other bills you can do that with. This was a disrespect to those first responders that were here today.”

The next bill to get that treatment was SB 309, giving dispatchers and 911 call center operators immunity from any civil liability if they transfer a caller to the national 988 suicide and crisis line. That bill also passed with a unanimous voice vote.

First, however, state Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson) proposed an amendment to restore $25 million a year for the current two-year budget that would go to municipalities to improve or expand their EMS operations. The money was included in Gov. Tony Evers’ budget proposal but removed by the Joint Finance Committee’s Republican leaders.

“Today, you have the opportunity to change that and do the right thing and make sure municipalities get the money they need to fund these essential services,” Fitzgerald said. The Assembly voted 54-42 against the amendment. 

Raising Epstein

A few bills later came SB 76, requiring prosecutors to get a judge’s approval before dismissing or amending charges for a broad group of crimes. That bill passed on a 53-43 party-line vote, with only Republican support.

There was no discussion of that bill’s content, however. Instead, Democrats offered an amendment requiring the governor to issue a formal notice calling for the release of the federal files on deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Even before Epstein’s name was uttered in the chamber, Majority Leader Rep. Tyler August (R-Walworth) launched a broad verbal attack on the Democrats.

As with the other amendments, August raised a “point of order,” objecting to the amendment’s relevance to the legislation. He accused Democrats of “political gamesmanship” and pursuing “gotcha votes” to embarrass Republicans, and charged that “they just flat-out lie” in political campaigns.

“And so this is just another embarrassing moment for Assembly Democrats,” August said. “And then they wonder why they’re never going to be in charge of this place.”

Rep. Clint Anderson (D-Beloit) retorted just as sharply.

“You know what’s embarrassing is getting mad about us talking about holding a pedophile accountable,” Anderson said. “I think it is time that we send a message that we think no matter how powerful, how wealthy, and how politically connected you are, you will be held accountable if you traffic children.”

Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) argued that the amendment was relevant because the original bill was about restricting deferred prosecution.

“We all just voted unanimously to increase penalties for human trafficking and extend the statute of limitations,” Snodgrass said. “You simply cannot vote for that and then vote down this amendment.”

When Rep. Randy Udell (D-Fitchburg) began recounting some of the names of Epstein’s reported victims, Petersen interrupted.

“How do any of these names relate to Wisconsin?” Petersen said.

Udell: “They are all victims of Epstein and these files should be released.”

Petersen: “Did they happen in Wisconsin?”

Udell (who represents the 47th Assembly District): “We don’t know. The files haven’t been released.”

Petersen: “Representative from the 47th, on the point of order — not on national politics.”

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