Kansas is a beautiful state which bears the name “The Sunflower State.” However, they recently run into some problems regarding their budget deficit which is currently estimated at $320 million. Their solution to this problem was to follow some of the other states in the USA and legalize sports betting. The Kansas officials have an over-optimism regarding this, but their hopes were crushed, and they were told that sports betting is not the magic pill that will solve their budget problems.
According to a TV broadcaster WDAF-TV which made a report on Sunday, this caution was issued as a consequence of the study conducted by The Pew Charitable Trusts. They stated that all the revenues that would come from the activities related to sports betting would likely be cannibalized from various other sources – mainly the casinos in this state. One of the authors of this study, Mary Murphy, stated that the states could make gains that are short-lived by that would be followed by the downward pressure on revenues due to the fact that more and more states would legalize sports betting.
Furthermore, Murphy added that it would be very difficult to state the exact financial benefits from sports betting simply because the activity is not yet popular and people are not quite used to it. Therefore, Murphy came to the conclusion that legalizing sports betting in the state of Kansas will likely have a very small to non-existent impact on this state. The main support for her claim is that other similar products such as alcohol, tobacco, and gambling currently bring only about 3.3% to the tax revenues. This, she added, was not really a huge number and simply relying on sports betting is futile. Murphy concluded that the revenue streams from sports betting would likely be really small.
Settling the Differences
However, the situation in the state of Kansas is a bit different. Despite the fact that Kansas hosts many aboriginal and commercial casinos, they will still try to push the whole sports betting thing as their optimism is still very high with this. Kansas State Senate President, Susan Wagle, will begin pushing the legalization of sports betting all over Kansas and remains to be seen whether she will succeed in her endeavor.
A statement was issued in May by the Republican legislator, and it states that the legalization of sports betting would help with diminishing illegal activities related to gambling and would allow states to become more modern in this aspect. Furthermore, they added that they were confident that Kansas Legislature would act as expected and allow the sports betting activities that would begin the following year. Sports betting is slowly winning over the USA, and it seems that many states started relying on this for additional revenue. Furthermore, many of the casinos already partnered up with sports betting giants and will introduce sports betting to their offer both online and live.
