The Arizona Department of Gaming released its final set of proposed Arizona sports betting rules Wednesday evening.
On Friday, the ADG will host a virtual public meeting for comments on the rules for AZ sports betting and daily fantasy sports. The written comment period will stay open through Friday night.
The ADG is working to meet its proposed Sept. 9 launch date for retail and mobile sports betting in Arizona. A timeline for the final sprint to launch could come during Friday’s meeting.
“We look forward to wrapping this up very soon and pushing the rules out and getting moving on the rest of the process,” ADG Director Ted Vogt said following a public comment session last week. “We will go ahead, once we have these rules in a final format, come up with a much more solid time frame that we will release publicly.”
Working through Arizona sports betting drafts
Gov. Doug Ducey signed sports betting legislation into law in April. Since then, the ADG has pushed to launch sports betting as quickly as possible.
An initial set of draft rules was released in June. Following a comment period, an updated set of rules covering AZ sports betting and daily fantasy sports was released that included license fee and tax rate:
- 8% tax on retail bets
- 10% tax on mobile bets
- $850,000 initial license fee
The ADG released another set of rules last week, specifically focused on license allocation. There are 20 licenses up for grabs, 10 for the state’s professional sports teams and venues and 10 for the state’s gaming tribes.
Limited comments in previous meetings
Despite multiple hours allocated to the meetings, previous ADG public comment sessions have generally finished in less than an hour.
A first round of comments was focused mostly on clarifying language and four specific issues:
- Number of skins
- License fees
- Tax rate
- License allocation
The second round of rules revealed licensees can have one sports wagering system, but up to two platforms.
During the license allocation comment meeting, there was discussion as to what the ADG was looking for in terms of community contributions.
“[It] won’t go down just to dollars,” Vogt said. “We want to see what they have done and what are they going to do in communities.”
Partners continue to emerge for AZ sportsbooks
This week, Barstool Sportsbook teamed up with Phoenix Raceway and PointsBet announced a deal with the Yavapai-Apache Nation.
Other deals in place include:
- Bally’s and the Phoenix Mercury
- Caesars and the Arizona Diamondbacks
- DraftKings and the PGA Tour’s Waste Management Phoenix Open
- FanDuel and the Phoenix Suns
- Kindred Group and the Quechan Tribe
- WynnBet and the San Carlos Apache Tribe
