The launch of legal sports betting in the Green Mountain State took another step forward after Vermont regulators approved amended rules for event wagering.
Vermont’s Board of Liquor and Lottery met Monday and approved "procedures" governing the online sports betting sites the state hopes to see launched around the end of 2023.
Those procedures were tweaked following feedback from a supplier and several operators that could ultimately offer Vermont sports betting if they emerge successful from a competitive bidding process that has yet to begin.
The changes include updating the language in the rules so that a measure of time is "calendar" days, and not "business" ones, such as with regards to a 90-day deadline for sportsbooks to conduct a third-party test of their mobile wagering platform after launch.
Another alteration gives operators more flexibility by changing some uses of "shall" to "may" in the rules. For instance, the procedures now state a sportsbook "may," and not "shall," cancel or void a wager without prior authorization from regulators under certain circumstances.
Not set in stone
More clarification was provided for the definition of a college sports tournament, which now "means a series of collegiate sports or athletic events involving four or more collegiate teams that make up a single unit of competition."
This is important because wagering on Vermont colleges is not allowed in the state unless the schools are playing in a tournament like March Madness. The rules were also updated to explicitly prohibit proxy betting and ban wagering on the outcome of replay reviews.
That said, Vermont regulators see their procedures as a living document that can be amended as necessary. There is time for further tweaks before the launch of legal wagering in the state, which will be exclusively provided via mobile apps and sites run by two to six operators, pending the outcome of the bidding process.
“That's the way the legislature set it up so that we could be as nimble and responsive as possible,” Commissioner Wendy Knight said Monday. “And I suspect that as we move forward, after we… we get this up and running, and we launch, that we will see things that are working and things that aren’t in feedback.”
Knight also clarified that pari-mutuel wagering on dog or horse races won't be allowed and suggested fixed-odds betting on horse racing would likewise be forbidden, at least for now.
Let the bidding begin
H.127, the bill passed by the legislature this year to bring legal sports betting to Vermont via mobile apps and sites, seeks two to six sportsbook operators for the state.
The Vermont Board of Liquor and Lottery then approved evaluation criteria during its June 14 meeting for an online sports betting-related request for proposals. An operator, for example, will be judged on the quality of its product and its past track record of regulatory compliance.
Bookmakers will also be graded on the amount of money they propose to give the state, with the statutory minimum being 20% of their revenue. The approved scoring system sets out that operators will receive 25 points for a revenue share of 20% to 30%, 50 points for a split of 31% to 40%, 75 points for 41% to 50%, and 100 points for 51% or more.
“We've had a lot of interest, but we'll see,” Knight said during a June board meeting. “The idea is to have a competitive market. We would like to have more than one. However, there is language built into the bill that if operators are not qualified, we're not required to select two if they don't meet the standards.”
