The Oklahoma House of Representatives has voted through a bill that would allow tribes in the US state to add legal sports betting to their existing gaming compacts.
House Bill 1027 passed yesterday (March 21) by a vote of 66-26 and will now move forward to the Senate for a further committee progress, where it could face additional amendments.
The final version of the bill would need approval from both the House and Senate before it could be passed to the Governor for final sign-off.
Introduced last month, the bill would open up in-person and retail sports betting to tribes that already have gaming compacts in place with the state.
Tribes that opt to offer sports betting would first need to reach an agreement with the state to amend their existing compacts and would face certain fees, namely percentages of sports pool revenue.
Such fees would include 4% of the first $5.0m of monthly net win, 5% of the next $5.0m of adjusted gross revenue – total receipts minus monetary pay-outs – and 6% of all subsequent adjusted gross revenue from sports betting.
Of these fees collected by the state, 12% would be assigned to the General Revenue Fund and the remaining 88% the Education Reform Revolving Fund.
A total of 35 tribes currently offer some form of gambling in Oklahoma and the bill would open up sports betting to each of these organizations.