Lawyers for Delaware last Monday appealed a federal court ruling that severely restricted the state's sports-betting plans. The legal move requests to bring back the Diamond State's effort to take bets on a line-up of pro and college sports and on single games. It grapples a three-judge panel madean acute fallacies when it's deciding Delaware could undertake only multigame wagers on National Football League action.
That ruling came in late August, just days before Delaware's 3 racetrack casinos were to begin taking bets they hoped would make the state an East Coast mecca for sports bettors. The federal appeals court and dealt another body blow to Delaware's plans for a new sports betting lottery, saying it must be limited to parlay bets on professional football games.
The appeal says that sports betting in Delaware would violate a 1992 federal ban on such wagering, basically obstructing the state's plans to start taking bets on September.
State officials had planned to offer single-game wagers as well as bets on other sports, but that plan was shot down. The appeal was filed last September 14, 2009. Lawyers for the state assert the appeals court ruling is opposed to previous rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court. Delaware was absolved from a federal ban on sports betting because it conducted an NFL sports lottery in 1976.
Delaware officials were looking forward to offer single-game betting on a variety of sports, not just the National Football League, because it would be more advantageous.
However, lawyers for the major sports leagues and the NCAA, led by the National Football League, sued Delaware last July and successfully argued that the state's plans violated a 1992 federal law that banned sports betting.
The law that was known as the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) , exempted Delaware and 3 other states, but only "to the extent" that they offered sports betting previously. Delaware authorized parlay betting on NFL games in 1976, but it was such a failure that it shut it down after one season.
The sports betting launched at Delaware Park, Dover Downs, and Harrington Raceway & Casino Sept. 10, but officials are unsure how much revenue limited parlay wagering will generate. The state was banking on tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year, and the tracks spent millions of dollars to upgrade existing race books that previously offer only full-card simulcasts.
Under a deal with horsemen, the racetracks will pay 9.6% of revenue from sports betting to purses. Horsemen receive 9% of revenue from VLTs; legislation awards purses 4.5% of revenue from table games when they become operational at the tracks.
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