Tennessee lawmakers advanced a sweepstakes casino ban bill Tuesday, pushing forward legislation that has faced negligible opposition.
- Tennessee’s sweepstakes casino ban bill is advancing unanimously, with bipartisan support and little to no opposition.
- The legislation would impose civil and criminal penalties and formalize enforcement against dual-currency casino operators.
- Tennessee reflects a broader national trend, with a dozen states expected to pass sweeps bans while attention shifts toward regulating prediction markets.
The Tennessee House State and Local Government Committee progressed the bill 21-0, with one member present but not voting. The bill passed out of the committee without debate or further discussion.
The bill now goes to the powerful Finance, Ways and Means Committee, and from there likely the full House floor. The measure’s companion bill passed the full Senate 32-0 earlier this month.
In the coming weeks, it will likely pass the House with similar widespread, bipartisan backing. Assuming passage, sweeps casino operators and their associated third-party vendors could face civil and criminal penalties after the bill takes effect later this year.
Tuesday’s House committee vote reaffirms lawmakers’ support for codifying bans against online dual-currency casinos as well as approving enforcement actions against them. Tennessee is one of roughly a dozen states where many major sweeps operators no longer accept customers.
Tennessee is one of a handful of states that allows legal online sportsbooks but has no legal brick-and-mortar gaming establishments. Lawmakers have not seriously considered legalizing real-money online slots and table games.
Nationwide trend
Tennessee continues a growing nationwide trend of legislative action against sweeps casinos in both politically red and blue states.
The Indiana and Maine legislators have already passed sweeps ban bills this year. Maryland and Minnesota are among the states expected to follow suit in the coming weeks.
By year’s end, at least a dozen states will likely have passed formal sweeps ban legislation. No state has seriously considered legislation to permit these games.
Proponents of the bans, which included regulated real-money iGaming operators and a number of state regulators, argue these dual-currency systems act as a way to offer illegal gambling. Sweeps casino operators have maintained their business model is akin to a promotional offering such as McDonald’s restaurants’ Monopoly promotion.
That argument has gained little traction in most statehouses. Sweeps casinos have also not challenged these newly passed bills in court, instead agreeing to cease operations in those jurisdictions.
Lawmakers’ movements against these games come several years after hundreds of sites became available in most states nationwide. Once a major cause of concern for regulated gaming stakeholders, political attention has now increasingly turned to prediction markets.
Prediction markets generate more than 80% of their trading volume from sports event contracts, and no major operator in the U.S. offers trades on casino games. But gaming stakeholders have cautioned that the federally regulated platforms’ ability to self-certify will allow them to potentially offer trades on casino games in what detractors consider another workaround of state-level regulated gaming.
New York and Kentucky are among the states that have introduced prediction market regulation and taxation bills this year. If these, or any state legislative proposal, were to pass, the legislation would undoubtedly be challenged by the prediction market operators in court.
