Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker made the decision not to renew Executive Order 2020-41, which granted Illinois residents the ability to register online for legal sports betting in the state.
Prior to the executive order, which was signed this past August, residents of Illinois were required to register in person at designated casinos to legally bet on sports. In-person requirements were always set to expire in late 2021, but online registration was allowed early as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, making access to legal sports gambling significantly easier and safer for residents.
Analysts of the burgeoning industry are none too pleased, saying it “puts the brakes” on a rapidly growing Illinois market that has attracted almost $1.6 billion in wagers and generated almost $28 million in tax revenue since the state’s first legal bet was placed days before the coronavirus shutdown in March 2020, reported Chicago Sun Time.
With the state’s 10 casinos closed and a massive hole growing in the state budget, Pritzker issued an executive order in June giving Illinois’ 10 new sportsbooks the green light to let customers sign up for accounts from their phones.
The law that introduced legal sports betting to Illinois — signed by Pritzker in 2019 — had been written with the in-person registration requirement to give brick-and-mortar casinos a head start over online gambling giants such as FanDuel and DraftKings, which previously operated in the state under dubious legal circumstances.
But Pritzker’s pandemic order allowed the online sports betting industry — both the existing internet giants and the new casino sportsbooks — to leap to a lucrative Illinois launch once professional athletes started returning to the field last summer. More than 95% of the dollars bet so far in the state have been wagered online.
The governor extended his order in a series of updates to his ongoing statewide disaster proclamation due to the virus, but he left out the sports betting with the latest version that goes into effect this week.