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January 29, 2025

Bill would let people in CT bet on state collegiate teams

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Mohegan Sun’s on-site retail sportsbook opened in 2021, and features a 140-foot video wall and 39 betting kiosks. The Uncasville-based casino has a sports betting partnership with FanDuel.

State Rep. Tony Scott (R-Monroe) believes it’s time to change Connecticut’s sports gambling law to allow people in the state to bet on collegiate sporting events involving state-based schools. 

When sports wagering became legal in Connecticut in October 2021, it arrived with a restriction — no one within the state’s borders would be allowed to place a bet on any of the state’s collegiate sports teams. 

So, no bets on UConn basketball, Yale football or Quinnipiac hockey.

That restriction applies to everyone located in Connecticut, whether or not they are a state resident. 

The one exception in that state law is it allows gamblers located in the state to wager on state collegiate teams participating in an intercollegiate tournament with at least four teams. Yet, even that exception has a restriction — you can’t bet on the individual tournament games involving state college teams, you can bet only on the outcome of all the games in the tournament.

Scott has introduced six bills in the 2025 legislative session related to sports betting in the state, but the most notable is House Bill 5563, “An Act Concerning Sports Wagering On Connecticut Intercollegiate Teams.”

“My proposal is that we can bet on any Connecticut university or college anytime throughout the season, regular season or playoffs,” Scott said in an interview with Hartford Business Journal.

When the law allowing sports betting in the state was negotiated, the restriction against wagering on state collegiate teams was intended as a safeguard to prevent gamblers from trying to illegally influence the outcome of games. 

Scott says that while he understood why that was necessary at the time, he believes it is no longer needed because the professional sportsbooks that operate in the state have safeguards to prevent it.

“DraftKings and FanDuel have these capabilities within their betting systems to detect those betting irregularities right away,” he said. “If there's an irregularity happening — a Quinnipiac team that normally gets $20,000 in bets a game and now it's getting $500,000 — if that were to happen now, DraftKings and FanDuel would flag it immediately and it would get stopped.”

Scott added that, at the moment, Connecticut is one of 39 states in the country that allow sports gambling, but only 23 allow betting on schools within their states.

Ryan Butler, a senior news analyst for the sports gambling news website  Covers.com, says there is another reason Connecticut should allow bettors in the state to gamble on in-state schools.

“You see this happening, where people are crossing state lines to bet on the Huskies,” Butler said. “That money is now going to New York or Massachusetts,” or possibly Rhode Island. 

Permitting it with the official state sportsbooks also would encourage gamblers to stop using illegal “offshore” sites to bet on state teams, he said.

“Despite legalization, there are still a lot of people using these offshore sites,” he said. “There are thousands of them based out of Barbados, Antigua, Hong Kong. They don’t have to follow the rules, so they can allow bets on Connecticut college teams.”

He was unable to say how much money Connecticut might be forfeiting to its neighboring states and illegal sites where bets are placed, but said it’s likely a small but significant piece of Connecticut’s overall handle, which is the total amount of money bet on a game.

Since sports betting became legal more than three years ago, Connecticut has generated nearly $6 billion in handle, producing revenue close to $600 million, Butler said. 

About 10% of that revenue goes to the state, which has received roughly $63 million over that time.

While the amount of additional revenue the state would receive if it allows in-state betting on collegiate sports teams here isn’t known, there are other benefits as well, Butler said.

“Instead of getting a coffee at a Connecticut sportsbook, you’re going across the line and maybe stopping at a Dunkin’,” he said. If the state changes the law, gamblers won’t have to leave the state and can spend their money here.

He added that the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos also would benefit from allowing gamblers to bet on in-state schools. Mohegan Sun, in particular, often hosts games featuring the UConn women’s basketball team, including regularly hosting the Big East women’s basketball conference tournament.

The other five bills Scott has proposed, all of which are being considered by the legislature’s General Law Committee, include:

  • HB 5564 establishes a maximum hold percentage for sports betting. The hold percentage refers to the amount of money wagered that sportsbooks get to keep as profit.
  • HB 5565 requires sportsbooks to allow consumers to opt-out of specific sports, events or types of wagers.
  • HB 5568 requires sportsbooks to establish a maximum wager and disclose that amount to consumers.
  • HB 5778 requires “two-way markets” for all sports wagering, preventing sportsbooks from limiting bets only to outcomes they find favorable, and
  • HB 5779 mandates that sportsbooks must correct any wagering errors before a game or event starts.

Another bill related to sports betting has been proposed by Rep. Dave Rutigliano (R-Trumbull). HB 5273 would prohibit sportsbooks from offering so-called “prop bets” on Connecticut collegiate teams.

With proposition bets, the gambler is not wagering on the outcome of the game but rather on something that might, or might not, happen during the game — a player scoring a certain amount of points, for example.

Scott said he agrees with the intent of the bill because it would protect the collegiate athletes. 

“If you’re betting on (UConn’s) Paige Bueckers to score 20 points in a game,” he said, “and she only scores 19, the online heckling and in the stadium, all that stuff, is more prevalent than if the UConn women's team just didn't cover by 10.”

Butler noted that NCAA President Charlie Baker, a former governor of Massachusetts, is campaigning nationwide against prop bets for college sports.

“He is on a big crusade to get a federal ban on prop bets,” Butler said of Baker. “The NCAA is adamantly opposed to prop bets.”
 

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