Illinois awards sports betting licenses to seven land-based casinos

The Illinois Gaming Board granted master sports wagering licenses to seven casinos Thursday.

While the casinos are now allowed to open sportsbooks as their land-based facilities remain shut down indefinitely due to COVID-19, there’s still nowhere for Illinois gamblers to wager on NASCAR, pro golf or other sports that have returned to the playing field, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. That’s because even with the licenses in hand, Gaming Board rules require the casinos to separately request approval to begin taking bets online or through mobile applications, the betting platforms that account for the bulk of the handle in other states that offer it.

Awarding the licenses injects a $40 million-plus into state coffers through one-time fees, which vary for each casino based on a percentage of its gross revenue from last year, capped at $10 million. It doesn’t come close to covering overall gambling tax revenue lost to the shutdown, considering that casinos raked in more than $114 million for the state from March through June 2019, while video gambling terminals netted it nearly $147 million. The Democratic governor signed a revised operating budget Wednesday that’s heavily reliant on borrowing after the shutdown left a $2.7 billion shortfall.

Two of the approved casinos — Rivers in Des Plaines, and the downstate Argosy Casino Alton — briefly took the state’s first-ever legal sports bets under temporary operating permits three months ago, just days before the coronavirus crisis spoiled the Illinois industry’s launch. But all 10 Illinois casinos were shuttered by March 16.

The five other casinos handed sports betting licenses during an unprecedented virtual Gaming Board meeting Thursday — the agency’s first in four months — were the Grand Victoria in Elgin, the Hollywood Casinos in Aurora and Joliet, Par-A-Dice in East Peoria and the Casino Queen in East St. Louis. Sports betting licenses last four years, renewable at $1 million a pop.

Their awarding also starts the clock on the 18-month “penalty box” period for online-only sports betting giants such as FanDuel and DraftKings. The state’s massive gambling expansion law, signed last summer, was written to give brick-and-mortar casinos a head start over those companies, which previously operated in the state in a gray area of daily fantasy sports eventually deemed illegal by former Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Once they’re enabled to start operating, the online-only companies would be stuck with $20 million initial licensing fees.

In the meantime, Gov. Pritzker added a provision to his coronavirus disaster proclamation last week that allows bettors to register for sports wagering accounts online instead of in person at a casino as initially required under the law. That means residents will be able to start an account and wager from home as soon as one of the licensed casinos puts in a Gaming Board request and is approved for online wagering. No requests had been submitted as of Thursday afternoon.

Casino operators are hoping they’ll be able to reopen their doors by the end of the month under Pritzker’s reopening plan. The Gaming Board issued protocols earlier this week, but the timing is up in the air as each casino needs approval for its own reopening plan. Indiana casinos are poised to reopen June 15.

The state’s three horse racing tracks have also applied for sports betting licenses but aren’t yet approved. Large sports facilities such as Wrigley Field and the United Center are eligible to apply for sportsbooks too, but none have so far.