Delaware’s new sports betting law complies with the state’s constitution, the state Supreme Court has concluded in a ruling to be issued this morning, paving the way for bets on football games and other sports as early as September.
In an advisory opinion signed by all five justices, the high court ruled that the sports betting law signed this month by Gov. Jack Markell would constitute a lottery, the only kind of sports gambling -- besides bets on horse races -- permitted under the the constitution.
An attorney for the National Football League had argued before the justices last week that sports betting involved too much skill to be considered a lottery whose outcome was based on chance.
The court ruled, however, that the constitution “allows lotteries to involve an element of skill, as long as chance predominates” and wrote that the games that are created for gamblers “must assure that chance is the predominant factor.”
The NFL has suggested it might sue the state over the issue, just as it had done unsuccessfully in 1976 when Delaware had a short-lived sports lottery. The state prevailed in that federal court case, however, and in today’s opinion, the justices wrote that they concurred with U.S. District Judge Walter Stapleton’s opinion then that lottery "games or gaming embraces a far wider range of activities than those based on pure chance.”
Markell has said he wants to have three kinds of bets: single-game using a point spread; over-under bets on the total number of points scored, and parlay games.
The justices ruled that parlay games, in which a better picks the winner or more than one game, meet constitutional muster, but chose not to rule on whether betting on a single game would constitute on a lottery.
“I very pleased with the Supreme Court's decision,” Markell said in a written statement. “This decision resolves the legal issues that have been presented and provides a solid legal framework for our sports lottery. With this guidance in hand, we are moving forward with implementing a successful sports lottery in Delaware.”
Delware supreme court APPROVES Sports Betting
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