A report released by an independent political analysis organization revealed that the California sports betting legislature war has seen a staggering total of $568 million spent by opposing camps — both supporting and attacking the two rival legal sports betting bills that are listed on the upcoming November 8 ballot.
Ballotpedia, an independent organization devoted to the analysis of U.S. politics, elections, and policy, published its compilation of California ballot measure finances today. On one side of the battle is Proposition 27, the sportsbook-sponsored bill to legalize online sports betting in the state. On the other side lies the tribal-backed Proposition 26, which would maintain the native tribes' dominance of retail gaming in California.
A total of $393 million in campaign contributions was raised by groups defending or attacking Prop 27, making it by far the most expensive legislative initiative in state history. The figure vastly surpasses the previous all-time high for a California ballot measure: The $224 million spent on the November 2020 ride-sharing tax exemption bill sponsored by Uber and Lyft.
Meanwhile, separate figures released by the Los Angeles Times today revealed that $175 million was spent directly in support of Prop 27. Most of this funding came from the four major sports betting sites that drafted the bill — FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, and PENN Entertainment (Barstool Sportsbook) — which contributed $102.5 million towards the Yes on 27 campaign.
FanDuel contributed the highest sum of $35 million, followed by BetMGM ($25 million), PENN ($25 million), and DraftKings ($17.5 million).
On the other side of the legislative battle, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians led all native tribes with $103 million spent on opposing Prop 27, with some of that money also going to a committee in favor of Proposition 26.
Ballot initiative spending totals $618 million
During the course of this year, a total of $618 million has been spent on all seven measures listed on the Nov. 8 ballot, but the combined sum of $568 million in expenditures on Props 26 and 27 alone represents more than 90% of the total spending — including bombarding Californians blanket TV ad campaigns as the sportsbooks and native tribes waged an all-out media war.
Ultimately, Californians were largely turned off by the media barrage, as this week's Public Policy Institute of California poll confirmed the intense level of voter dissatisfaction and forecasted that both Propositions will be rejected, with the sportsbook bill expected to go down by a lopsided 67% to 26% margin.
Aside from breaking down campaign spending on California legislative initiatives, the Ballotpedia study also addressed two other key issues:
- The cost of signature drives that met the minimum threshold that would allow each piece of legislation to be qualified for the ballot.
- Readability, i.e. the wording of the legislation that impacts clarity and decipherability in the minds of voters.
Rising cost of signature drives
Some of the key figures from the report regarding signature drives included:
- $118.29 million was spent on signature drives for 29 ballot initiatives in 2022.
- Proposition 27 had the most expensive signature drive at $18.8 million.
- $4.08 million was the average petition drive cost in 2022 — in 2020, the average cost was $2.06 million.
- $12.70 was the average cost per required signature (CPRS) for 2022. In 2020, the average CPRS was $8.09 — and $6.19 in 2018.
"We were expecting signature costs to be higher this year," said Ryan Byrne, Ballotpedia's Ballot Measures Managing Editor. "Campaigns began highlighting issues, including labor shortages and COVID, with signature-gathering efforts last winter. However, the size of this increase wasn't known until we calculated signature costs for each initiative."
Despite the rising costs of getting people to sign up in support of legislative initiatives, this had little impact on the eventual success or failure of the measures.
"The total cost spent on signature drives across the country has increased each year despite the number of initiatives continuing to fall," said Jackie Mitchell, the Ballot Measures Staff Writer who co-authored the Ballotpedia report. "In 2016, 76 citizen initiatives appeared on the ballot. Altogether, $78 million was spent collecting signatures for those measures."
Mitchell added that there are 30 measures on the ballot in 2022, and yet signature drives cost these campaigns a combined $118 million.
Readability takeaways
Byrne said that in the five years he has spent gathering and analyzing readability data, there is one factor that has remained constant: Ballot measure questions are generally difficult to read and understand.
According to the report, California's average grades for ease of understanding and overall readability, with respect to its legislative initiatives, put the state in the middle of the pack.
Neither Props 26 nor 27 differed markedly in terms of how the respective wording of the titles of their bills is concerned, with Prop 26 scoring a marginally higher figure of 17 as compared to Prop 27's rating of 14.
Interestingly, the ease of understanding the respective titles of the two bills saw the tribal bill rated at -17... compared to the sportsbook bill at +2 — although it should be noted that the latter evaluation is still well below the national state average.
