Brett Maciech
bmaciech@uwyo.edu
The recent decision made by Nevada regulators that requires all daily fantasy sports businesses to have a gambling license is projected to not have a direct effect on Wyoming’s own residents or political landscape.
Representative Dan Zwonitzer, R-Laramie County, said he does not foresee the issue ever being brought up in Wyoming.
“We do have a whole lot of gambling issues going on in the legislature,” Zwonitzer said, “and to my knowledge of the discussions that part of it has never been brought up, but we’ve never had to regulate those people. I would be extremely surprised if the state of Wyoming took any steps to try to reign it in or regulate anything like Draft Kings or any of those fantasy footballs betting sites.”
Zwonitzer said the legislature is looking into how better to regulate gambling within the state. This includes gambling on horse racing and the recent issues the legislature has had with the state lottery.
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice John Bohman said he could see Wyoming being affected by the events in Nevada only on a federal level.
“Currently Nevada is trying to make it a federal issue, that’s what Nevada is doing now, but that makes sense. Part of their state revenue comes off gambling. You have people travelling to Vegas, travelling to Reno – they make a lot of money on gambling.” Bohman said. “Wyoming really doesn’t on a state level. It’s conceptually different, but it’s definitely going to be an issue to the state here if the federal government decides to make it their issue because then it becomes everyone’s problem.”
Economic major Austin Hoover said he is not worried about this ever becoming a difficulty for him since he is never bothered with any form of online gambling in the first place.
“Gambling is a double-edged sword,” Hoover said. “Some people make a lot of money off of it and the majority of people lose. I feel like if you do online gambling you don’t know if it’s actually legal or not. I’m more in-person – if I’m going to risk my money I want to know who I’m losing my money to face-to -face.”
There is also an on-going FBI investigation and lawsuit that has been filed against Draft Kings, to find out if it actually has the ability to pay-out winnings to their members and if allegations of insiders earning money on rival sites using player information are true.
