A bill in the Oregon Legislature would legalize betting on college sports. But in its initial public hearing, it faced pushback.

Through the Oregon Lottery and DraftKings, Oregonians are currently able to place bets on the outcomes and achievements of professional sports games, teams and athletes. 

Betting on college sports, however, is banned. 

 A bill in the Oregon Legislature would legalize betting on college sports. But in its initial public hearing, it faced pushback from tribal representatives and anti-gambling organizations. 

Senate Bill 1503, sponsored by Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, would allow the Oregon Lottery to conduct gambling opportunities based on the outcomes of college sports games. 

The bill came into the hearing with a pair of amendments, which would ban betting on individual athletic performance and direct net proceeds toward funding the Oregon Opportunity Grant program, the state's largest publicly funded, need-based grant program for college students. 

Betting on college sports is already occurring in the unregulated and fraud-prone illegal market, Courtney said, and allowing it to occur within the Oregon Lottery would protect gamblers. 

Furthermore, directing the revenue toward grants for college students would have a significant impact on education funding, where there is never enough money to go around, he said. 

Courtney estimated the new revenue could add up to 3,000 new grants for college students. 

"This will stabilize and permanently fund Opportunity Grants in a very powerful way," Courtney said. "This is a major source of funding in the millions of dollars." 

Courtney said a drafting error led to the amendment directing all net revenues toward the Oregon Opportunity Grants (it was supposed to be 50%), but he actually likes the amendment as currently constructed. 

These amendments garnered some praise from bill opponents, but not enough to change their underlying objection to the bill. 

Justin Martin, representing the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, said SB 1503 would pull funds away from Oregon's Native American tribes, which largely rely on casino revenues to fund essential services. 

Some tribes have the ability to offer college sports betting, but can only do so on reservation lands, which are primarily located in rural areas and some distance from the state's population hubs. 

Tribes are already being "inundated" by gambling expansion, Martin said, both through attempted expansion by the Oregon Lottery and out-of-state interests trying to enter the Oregon market. 

As it stands, tribal casinos only make up about 30% of the state's market share, he said. 

Martin encouraged lawmakers to set up a task force to study gambling expansion efforts, advancements in technology, impacts on key stakeholders and how other states regulate gambling. 

"(SB 1506) would be taking money out of tribes' pockets," Martin said. "We need to take a pause and study this and look at the right way to do things in Oregon moving forward." 

Courtney disagreed: "In no way does this bill take away from casinos, casino betting at all." 

Kitty Martz, executive director of Voices of Problem Gambling Recovery, also supported the creation of a task force to study gambling in Oregon and the state's current regulatory framework. 

House Bill 4046 would create such a task force; it has not yet received a public hearing. 

"We're becoming widely known in the gambling industry as the wild west, where anything goes with gambling in Oregon," she said. 

Martz said the 24-hour access to gambling via mobile devices is much different than the kinds of "traditional" lottery games that existed when Oregon voters approved the creation of a state lottery in 1984. 

The current paradigm — which allows for greater gambling availability — also carries a higher risk of addiction, she said. This availability would also impact tribes' current casino operations, she said. 

"There's every bit of evidence that it would, in fact, interfere with what the tribes are doing with their brick and mortar facilities," Martz said.

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