Georgia Fails to Legalize Sports Betting in 2023 Legislative Session
Georgia will keep its ban on sports betting in place for another year at least.
Sponsors of legalizing sports betting in Georgia were optimistic in 2023, but faced the same kind of setbacks they've experienced in recent years. The Georgia legislature established a deadline of Monday to pass new bills for 2023.
Even though the legislative session lasts through the spring of 2024, lawmakers in Georgia have announced no additional bills will be considered this year. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives concluded their proceedings on Monday without considering bills that would authorize sports betting.
Last week, the Georgia Senate voted against Senate Bill 57, which would have enabled online and in-person sports betting at sportsbook kiosks in specific businesses.
There was still a glimmer of hope last week, as two other sports betting bills continued to be alive in Atlanta. House Bill 380 aimed to legalize sports betting in a manner similar to SB57. And Senate Resolution 140 was intended to initiate a legislative-led ballot referendum to ask voters if they were in favor of expanding gambling to include sports.
However, both those measures suffered the same fate as SB57 yesterday.
Bills Bit the Dust in Committee
HB380 was proposed by Rep. Marcus Wiedower (R-Watkinsville) in February. It would have allowed only mobile sports betting, with no in-person betting option.
The revenue generated from expanded gambling was expected to support the Georgia Lottery for Education Account. HB380 came to a halt after being referred to the House Higher Education Committee.
Certain lawmakers believe any expansion of gambling requires voter approval through a statewide ballot referendum. Although former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton argued that's not required, the legal question was cited as the reason for the delay in the House sports betting decision.
In the Senate, the sports betting resolution would have put the issue to a public vote. Senate Resolution 140 would have asked Georgians if they were in favor of legalizing sports betting. But the ballot question would only have reached the ballots with a two-thirds majority support in both legislative chambers, which the GOP leadership claimed was impossible to achieve in 2023.
I don't know why it's unacceptable to let the people decide on this matter. We're not all autocrats up here,” said Sen. Bill Cowsert (R-Athens), the author of the sports betting resolution.
Cowsert further stated that the repeated defeats of sports betting demonstrate the substantial separation among lawmakers when it comes to gambling.
Georgians Desire Sports Betting
A number of recent polls, including one in 2023, reveal a strong public enthusiasm for legal sports betting. Pollsters have concluded that roughly six out of ten Georgians support legalizing sports betting.
GeoComply, the leading cybersecurity and fraud prevention third-party service provider for legal sportsbooks and iGaming platforms in the US, can pinpoint the exact location of a user requesting access to a regulated gaming website. The tech firm reported this month that it blocked over 1.4 million access requests from computers and mobile devices in Georgia during the 2022-23 NFL season through last month's Super Bowl.
Most of those requests were trying to access legal online sportsbooks in neighboring Tennessee.
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