How The 2024 US Election Will Impact Sports Betting Legislation

Donald Trump’s history with gambling

Intuitively Trump feels like a candidate most likely to give unconditional support to legalized betting. Deregulation is a significant component of his political philosophy, and he has a personal history with the gambling industry.

Trump was a major player in the Atlantic City casino scene in the 1980s. He opened Harrah’s at Trump Plaza in 1984 and bought the Atlantic City Hilton Hotel the next year, renaming the building Trump’s Castle.

His most famous casino venture was the Trump Taj Mahal, which he bought in 1988.

None of these high-profile acquisitions avoided bankruptcy filings, though, with the first two reaching that point in 1992 while the Taj Mahal failed quickly, hitting rock bottom in 1991, just over a year after its opening.

It’s difficult to interpret what an extensive, but turbulent experience will do for someone’s opinion of an industry, but for what it’s worth Trump told the New York Times in 2016 that he had a positive experience with the casinos.

Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me. The money I took out of there was incredible.

Trump and sports betting legislation

Just because Trump doesn’t seem to express any personal distaste for betting or the gaming industry, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s been a champion for sports betting legislation.

The landmark 2018 case — Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association — that allowed states to start passing sports betting legalization laws took place during his presidency, but it was decided on by a Supreme Court that had just one Trump appointee at the time in Neil Gorsuch. 

It’s also worth noting that Trump’s Department of Justice released an opinion less than a year later that suggested an interpretation of the 1961 Wire Act that would prohibit any form of gambling that crosses state lines.

Later that year, president Joe Biden attacked Trump on the opinion, giving a statement to CDC Gaming Report saying he didn’t ‘support adding unnecessary restrictions to the gaming industry like the Trump Administration has done.’

While many predicted Trump would push for legalized sports betting prior to his presidency, there isn’t much he did directly to validate that projection during his four years. Most progress in that time was made in the courts.

His current campaign platform entitled ‘Agenda 47’ makes no mention of betting legislation.

Harris and sports betting legislation

Like Trump, there is very little Harris has done directly to further the cause of sports betting legalization, but there is no indication to claim she has not been a hindrance, either.

Harris has not had the authority to drive legislative action on this account, and the Biden-Harris administration seemed relatively happy with that status quo since 2020 — leaving the issue with the states, and made no move to push for federal legislation.

The administration’s most high-profile foray into the area came when it filed a brief to the Supreme Court indicating it did not think the nation’s highest court should hear an appeal on a Florida sports betting case. 

That suggested maintaining a status quo where sports betting is legal in the state, but the case itself dealt with the Seminole tribe’s monopoly on the gambling business in Florida and the support of the Biden-Harris administration could be interpreted as support of that arrangement rather than sports betting in a broad sense. 

Whether the pressure the president applied was a decisive factor, the Supreme Court ultimately decided to leave the case alone on June 17. Gaming law attorney Daniel Wallach, interpreted the decision as a win for sports betting as a whole in Florida.

“What’s important with today’s announcement is that the most significant barrier to online sports betting in Florida has been removed.”

In her career prior to becoming vice president as a district attorney and senator Harris gave no indication of having a strong stance on gambling legalization. The state where she spent most of her career in politics — California — is one of the few states without legalized sports betting, or any notable active legislation pushing for it. That said, assuming Harris has an anti-legalization stance based on that information alone would be highly speculative.

The Vice Presidential Candidates

While it’s often difficult to know exactly what kind of influence a vice president will have on an administration’s policy agenda, it’s worth taking a look at where both Harris and Trump’s VP picks stand on sports betting.

J.D. Vance is relatively difficult to place on this issue because he’s a one-term senator who has never legislated on the state level — and he’s never made a strong position on sports betting publicly known. He hails from a state in Ohio that has legalized sports betting, but he played no role in pushing for that legislation.

Trying to intuit his position isn’t a particularly easy task as Vance has shown himself to be ideologically malleable in the past. He has widely been tagged with the ‘opportunist’ label, a characterization supported by the fact he once described Trump as ‘America’s Hitler’ and now runs alongside him. 

Tim Walz is a little easier to place when it comes to sports betting legislation because he’s been the governor of a state (Minnesota) giving him the power to put it into law. 

Because Minnesota does not have legalized sports betting, the easy assumption to make would be that Walz is not in favor of it, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, Walz has yet to have the opportunity to sign a sports betting legalization bill as Minnesota’s house and senate have been unable to agree on one to this point.

Walz expressed interest in passing such a bill in February if one reached his desk.

“I think the issue still is if they can get a bill through the house and senate that meets all those constituency needs. If they do, I’ve said I will sign it.”

It seems like a stretch to assume either Vance or Walz will drive policy on this issue as vice presidents, but between the two Walz is the one who has shown a more demonstrable supportive stance on betting legalization. 

The elections that got us to this point

In the 2024 presidential election neither Trump nor Harris appears to be making betting legalization a major priority — and the difference between where they seem to stand on the issue doesn’t seem vast.

That might make it seem that neither would be consequential in this space, but history has shown that presidents can be pivotal on the issue of gambling, even if that was never their initial intent.

For instance, John F. Kennedy signed the Wire Act in 1961 prohibiting the use of wire communications for interstate sports gambling as a means to cut off funds to organized crime, but the end result was ensuring that legislation surrounding betting would be decided at the state level for decades to come.

It’s impossible to know what Richard Nixon would’ve done in the same situation, but that law was brought forth by a Congress with a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate. The Republican may have vetoed it if he were in the Oval Office.

Just over three decades later in 1992, Republican president George H. W. Bush signed the  Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act — perhaps the most consequential gambling law in American history. This made sports betting outlawed in all states other than Nevada — where it was already in place.

PASPA also allowed sports lotteries to continue in Oregon, Delaware, and Montana, but generally speaking it prevented the spread of legalized sports betting throughout the United States. It’s impossible to know for certain what the opportunity cost of the ruling was in every state, but according to UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research, Nevada’s sports betting revenue between 1992 and Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association in 2018 was approximately $3.92 billion.

When Bush was elected in 1988 something like PASPA did not appear to be top of mind, but the lifetime ban legendary baseball player Pete Rose got for betting on baseball in 1989 changed the climate around the issue and prompted action.

Once again, it’s hard to say for certain how things might’ve been different if Bush’s opponent — Michael Dukakis — had won the presidency. For what it’s worth, Dukakis became an anti-gambling advocate later in life so it’s probable he would’ve supported PASPA too, but there’s no way to know.

Projecting when inflection points will arise on particular issues is tough to do, and Trump or Harris could become more influential on betting in their presidencies than it appears today.

The State of the Current Legislative Battle

While neither 2024 presidential candidate has been able to claim significant legislative accomplishments in this area, one of them has been president since 2016 and in that time legalized sports betting has exploded, becoming legal – in one form or another — in 38 states.

The first part of this progress was the Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association verdict that opened the door in 2018, but after that the legislative march to legalization has come at the state level.

As a result, when evaluating which candidates and parties are the biggest supporters of sports betting legalization, you need to examine what is happening in the states.

The Partisan Divide on sports betting legislation

Assigning credit when it comes to state legislation can be tricky as bills have to pass through houses and senates as well as avoiding a gubernatorial veto in order to become law.

With that in mind, the states where it's most clear that a particular party is pushing the agenda are those where one party has a trifecta — meaning they have a majority in the house and senate with the governor also belonging to their party.

In these trifecta situations, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to have pushed legalization.

In the 11 states with divided governments, 10 of them have legalized sports betting, a result that reinforces the idea that this is an issue with significant bipartisan buy-in. That makes sense in light of the SLU/YouGov poll from Missouri that indicated at least 58 percent of likely voters from each party supported legalization.

The numbers above require a little bit more context, though, because not all of the legislation was passed while the state governments had their current partisan alignments. Looking at each government at the time it passed legalization supports the notion that this is something the two parties have worked on together.

Current Democratic trifectas Michigan, Maryland, and Massachusetts were divided at the time of bills passing, as were current Republican Trifectas New Hampshire and Montana. Only currently divided government that was a partisan trifecta when it passed legalization legislation (Arizona, Republican).

That means Democratic trifectas have only pushed 11 legalization bills compared to a Republican 13, but the Democrats have had significantly less power at the state level in recent years. Considering how many more states the GOP have legislative control, it’s still fair to say the Democrats have been more reliably pushing sports betting legislation forward when given the opportunity.

Put another way, if you’re currently in a state without legalized sports betting, there’s a 66.67 percent chance that state is controlled by the Republicans at all three levels.

Conclusion

Although the current state of American politics is hyperpolarized, the issue of legalized sports betting is one of the few things that both major parties seem able to agree on.There are different ways to come at supporting legislation that makes sense for either party’s identity. 

Democrats have the ability to base their support on increased government revenue that can be spent on social programs. It is a similar idea to pushing for state lotteries that fund education, which has been part of the Democratic playbook as far back as the late 90s when the party made the creation of lotteries a significant issue in a pair of gubernatorial races in the South. Meanwhile, Republicans can offer an endorsement from a libertarian standpoint. The GOP is the party of deregulation and loosing restrictions around betting can fit neatly into that ethos. 

Similarly, you can find a route to opposing legalizing sports gambling from either party’s perspective as Democratic reluctance can be messaged around concerns around social harms while Republican hesitance can be framed around social conservatism. 

Because of that relative lack of partisanship, this is something that neither party has campaigned on too strongly. Although legalized sports betting is relatively popular overall, there isn’t enough differentiation to land any significant political blows. If one presidential candidate tried to promote their sports betting legalization bonafides the other could point out they are also in support.

That doesn’t mean there is no tangible difference between the parties — and by extension their presidential candidates. There is evidence to suggest that Democrats are more likely than their Republican counterparts to push for pro-legalized betting legislation.

Biden was critical of Trump's regulation of sports betting in the past, and protected a status quo that allows for legal gambling in Florida, but it is difficult to know whether Harris stood on those issues considering she did not make public statements about them. 

It seems odd to imagine the former casino owner who’s often spotted hanging out at UFC fights could be the less progressive candidate on sports betting, but that’s where the evidence points.

Even so, voters who have a strong interest in legal betting should look further down the ballot to find candidates more likely to make a material impact on laws that impact gambling. For the most part this is a state-level issue, and that’s where both presidential candidates appear happy to leave it.