(The Center Square) – Wisconsin got a step closer to legalized online sports wagering Tuesday when the Senate approved a bill that would allow the state’s tribes to offer sports wagering throughout the state with a bipartisan 21-12 vote.
The bill would have to be signed by Gov. Tony Evers, who has voiced support for the proposal, and then new compacts related to payments to the state would have to be negotiated and approved federally.
Nine Republicans voted for the bill and nine voted against it.
Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, called the process of bringing the bill to the Senate floor “very corrupt” in prioritizing “special interests.”
“The problem for legislative Republicans is that our core voters will hold us to account for selling out their interests and the passage of these two unpopular bills will help pave the way to minority status for Republicans come November,” Nass said in a statement.
Sens. Andre Jacque, R-New Franken, and Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, also spoke on the bill and the perils of problem gaming before several Democrats spoke on the importance of tribal sovereignty and retaining the right of Wisconsin’s tribes to have exclusive rights to gaming.
The proposal would change the state’s definition of “bet” to allow the state’s tribes to offer mobile sports wagering if the bettor is in Wisconsin and the sportsbook servers are on tribal land, an amendment to current compacts allowing for casino gambling and sports wagering on tribal lands despite the state’s ban on betting.
The law would allow for a similar sports wagering model as Florida, where the state’s sportsbook operators have servers on federally recognized tribal lands while users can be in the state of Wisconsin.
The proposal cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision not to hear a challenge to the sports wagering pact between Florida and the Seminole tribe of the hub-and-spoke sports wagering model.
Wisconsin receives payments that are a portion of the net win from tribal casinos but does not separately report sports wagering payments.
In 2024, the state received more than $66 million in shared revenue payments with nearly $66 million in 2023 and nearly $57 million in 2022.
The bill could be challenged legally since the Wisconsin Constitution states “the legislature may not authorize gambling in any form” outside a few exceptions, including bingo, raffle games, pari-mutual racing and some forms of lottery.
Bill authors, however, believe that this has already been determined in law and this is simply an extension of the sports wagering already offered on tribal land by the state’s tribes.
“It takes a long time to get the compacts going,” Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, said before the Senate session.
