Someone once compared golf’s Skins Game to watching rich people win the lottery. Well, the PGA is at it again, demanding an “integrity fee” from legalized sports betting. (Thankfully, Nevada is in a position to tell the league to bugger off.) Let’s call this for what it is: a naked cash grab. The professional sports leagues see a lot of money to be made from skimming off the top of sports-betting money and they’re trying to sell it legislatures like Illinois‘ as a means of legitimizing sports wagering. According to expert witness Chris Grove, whereas the Lege is contemplating a 10% tax on money won (bringing in $68 million), the 1% up-front “integrity fee” would be tantamount to a 20% or 25% tax. The greed of the major leagues knows no bounds and never has. (If Major League Baseball is profiting off sports betting, isn’t it time to let Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson into Cooperstown?) The churchy set is against the whole thing, sports betting, integrity fees, you name it … as one might expect.
State Sen. Napoleon Harris, a former NFL linebacker, is carrying the ball in the Illinois Lege and Gaming Committee Chairman Sen. Steve Stadelman, who in downplaying the financial impact of sports-betting money, said Illinois should be “part of the conversation” taking place nationwide on the issue. Illinois Casino Gaming Association Executive Director Steve Swoik swatted back at the major leagues, testifying that “If the taxes and these fees that are paid to operate sports books are so high, then the payouts can’t be as high as sometimes what’s being paid out in illegal betting. People are still going to continue to do the illegal betting because they can get a higher payout.” American Gaming Association Senior Director of Research Will Green agreed: “It will cut the legs off of legal sports betting, quite honestly, before it has the chance to walk.”
You tell ’em.
In other Illinois news, vintner Cynde Bunch is lobbying hard for a special-status bill that would enable her to build a $178 million casino resort at Walker’s Bluff in Carterville. The legislation, HB 5146, is currently stuck in committee and the legislative guillotine falls on bills that haven’t moved out of committee three days from now. A comparable state Senate bill is stymied in committee. Bunch tries to downplay the importance of the casino but it is clearly the spoke on which the wheel turns. “I understand the state is a financial mess. If there is anything that is needed in Southern Illinois, it is jobs,” Bunch told a reporter. This one’s obviously going to come down to the wire.
* Pennsylvania regulators had to slap the wrists of three casinos last week. Parx Casino was fined $30,000 for allowing three self-excluded 
players onto the casino floor and permitting them to gamble. They were even given cash advances, a big no-no. Presque Isle Downs was hit up for $15,000 because it kept three employees on the job even though their licenses had expired, while Washington Trotting Association got dunned $7,000 for allowing underage play at The Meadows Casino. That will be all until May 2, when the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board meets again and presumably hands out a new round of fines.
* Our congratulations to Bill Boyd, who is being inducted into the initial class of the Mississippi Gaming Hall of Fame. It couldn’t happen to a nicer man.
Congrats Mr Boyd. A “gentle giant” if there ever was one!