Oklahoma Sports Betting Charge Being Led by Thunder

If Oklahoma sports betting is legalized in the near future, supporters of the move may have the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder to thank.

Sure, pro sports franchises are no strangers to being intimately involved in the pushes to legalize sports betting in the United States. They stand to make stacks of cash when it launches, through a wide variety of different mechanisms.

Still, for the most part, active support takes the form of public statements, and perhaps lobbying in local government. It seldom includes a team leading the creation and charge of a specific proposal.

We can officially go ahead and count the OKC Thunder among the exceptions. As the debate over the future of sports betting in Oklahoma rages on, they have proposed a structure in hopes of enticing the Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association into an agreement that changes The Sooner State’s gaming laws forever.

The Thunder’s Oklahoma Sports Betting Plan Calls for Shared Licenses

Two major snags are holding up Oklahoma sports betting talks: Governor Kevin Stitt’s rocky relationship with tribal leaders, and the tribes’ insistence sports betting operations be exclusive to them.

Both obstacles are tied to the same fundamental disagreement. Plenty of people in Oklahoma want sports betting deployed on a larger scale. That hard to do when tribes are the only permitted operators. But tribes currently have gambling exclusivity in their gaming compact with The Sooner State. Combine that with their massive amount of overall influence, and they have most of the leverage.

The Thunder’s Oklahoma sports betting plan is the team’s attempt to find a common ground using shared licenses. Here is how that would work in practice, as Frank Ammirante of Deadspin explains:

“During a recent legislative hearing, Oklahoma City Thunder Vice President Will Syring outlined a proposal that would allow the team, or a tribal consortium, to manage a single retail and mobile sports betting license. Under the plan, revenues from wagers would be shared with participating tribes, while the Thunder would receive 0.25 percent of the total betting handle. Syring said the model reflects practices in other states where professional teams benefit from betting partnerships and argued it would help keep the Thunder financially competitive within the NBA landscape.”

This is an interesting proposal on its face. As far as we can tell, it’s also unique relative to the rest of the USA. Sports teams are no strangers with striking partnerships with corporate sportsbooks. But agreements between teams and operators in tribal-only states aren’t nearly as common.

It Doesn’t Sound Like Oklahoma’s Tribes are Too Excited by This Proposal

Although the Thunder’s proposal for Oklahoma sports betting is far more collaborative than most of the state’s other efforts, tribes still seem to be wary of its blueprint.

“The Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association has warned that any sports betting license issued outside tribal control could violate the State-Tribal Gaming Act,” Ammirante goes on to write. “Association Chairman Matthew Morgan said tribes are open to collaborating with the Thunder but stressed that any agreement must honor tribal sovereignty and existing gaming compacts.”

At its most basic level, the shared-license model doesn’t seem to honor tribal sovereignty to the fullest. Getting 0.25 percent of the handle might not seem like much, but it could technically wind up being a huge number. Remember, the Oklahoma sports betting handle would be the total amount of wagers placed. It does not refer strictly to sportsbook revenue.

Take The Sunflower State as an example. They are one of Oklahoma’s most direct neighbors. Last year, sports betting in Kansas took in more than $13 billion worth of wagers. Giving away 0.25 percent of that comes out to over $30 million.

The Thunder’s Plan is Nevertheless Garnering Optimism

Despite the seemingly lukewarm feelings from the OIGA, many are generally hopeful the Thunder’s proposal will lead to major headway. And hey, they might be correct.

The Thunder’s initiative could wind up being a starting point off which everyone involved negotiates a bill that’s actually passed. That by itself is a big deal. Because while sports betting has long been a hot topic of conversation, it hasn’t led to a ton of tangible progress.

Digging further into the Thunder’s proposed measure also reveals an important detail. Sports betting off tribal property would be extremely limited. And the locations at which it’s taking place would still have tribal involvement and oversight. From the tribes’ perspective, this feels as if it could be a reasonable concession to make. Based on the publicly available details, it would expand their Oklahoma sports betting reach without costing a huge fraction of their business.

To this end, we don’t yet know the largest potential sticking point. Mr. Morgan mentions tribal sovereignty, but that could refer to different factors. Maybe tribes do not want sports franchises getting a cut of the handle and would prefer allocating a portion of actual revenue instead. Or maybe tribes view the idea as any off-site sportsbooks as a non-starter. They could view that setup as opening a can of worms that forces them to surrender portions of their control over the longer term.

For now, the Oklahoma sports betting model proposed by the Thunder appears to at least be reigniting talks that were pingponging between dormant and circular. Under the circumstances, this qualifies as a major development.

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