We have sports wagering news from New York and Vermont, plus gambling news from Oklahoma. But this week’s stories are overshadowed by the events in California on Sunday when we lost nine souls in a helicopter crash. Among the victims were NBA legend Kobe Bryant and his young daughter.
Hello my friends, and thanks so much for joining me on another edition of This Week in Gambling. I come to you with a heavy heart for this program, as literally just hours before I came on I learned, like many of you, of the horrific helicopter crash in California that took the lives of Kobe Bryant, his young daughter and several other individuals, including another child. As they say, however, the show must go on… but when things like this happen it really casts a long and dark shadow over everything else… including this week’s news.
We will discuss more on Kobe Bryant at the end of the program, but ironically first we have three sports wagering news stories involving the governors of three different states… and we’re going to start with mobile and online betting in the state of New York. Betting on sports was regulated there last year but only within the confines of land-based casinos. And try as they may, state lawmakers have just not been able to pass any legislation that would extend the activity online or to a mobile device.
This year the push was already on to extend sports betting from beyond the confines of the casinos, but the governor there was not biting. He wasn’t gonna have any part of it. And so, here we are not even a month into 2020 and already online and mobile sports betting is off the table. Up in Vermont however sports wagering news is quite the contrary as the governor there actually wants a sports betting… including online… citing the potential tax revenues. Of course all he has to do is look across the border to his neighbors in New Hampshire who already regulated sports betting, and who knows? Perhaps, he did and that was a motivating factor.
Juxtaposition that with what’s going on right now in Oklahoma where the governor of that state seems to believe that most forms of gambling are now illegal within his borders… and he’s even asked a federal judge to enter a ruling that will reflect that. This stems from a spat between the state and tribal gaming interests that started several months ago. You see, the governor believes that the state deserves a bigger piece of the action when it comes to revenue from tribal casinos… to which tribal gaming interests naturally disagree with.
As this standoff continued, the governor believes that the gaming compact between the state and the tribes expired on January 1st, and thus the tribes are now operating illegally. The tribes however, believe that the compact automatically renewed on January 1st and that they’re doing nothing wrong. It’s really amazing how quickly things can escalate when money is involved.
This week we do have a very special game review to share with you… it’s for the SoulCalibur II casino skill game from our friends at GameCo. Players compete through six stages of one round fights, placing bets for each round until they finally get to fight Inferno for free. You can watch the full review for this game and see many other skill game videos when you visit our YouTube channel.
And finally this week, when we slow down and think about how fragile life really is, all of these news headlines seem remarkably unimportant. I myself was never a Lakers fan, although I always appreciated Kobe’s talent. But still I question, why has his death so profoundly affected so many of us. Perhaps because he was just such a nice guy… Perhaps it was because he was so young… Perhaps it was because it was so shocking and unexpected. But lots of people die every day, and all of those things are tragedies as well.
For me, speaking as a father, what probably got to me the most was the death of the children. This felt horrific because it was horrific. I’m sure all of us parents out there felt in our hearts what Kobe’s wife must have been feeling when she heard the news of the passing of their 13 year old daughter… not to mention her husband and the other souls on that helicopter. I myself have four little girls that I don’t get to see very much… one of whom is 13… so for me it was especially… it hit home.
I don’t get to see them as much as I want, but if they’re out there watching, you girls are the reason that I live… just like all the other moms and dads out there. I really don’t know what to say anymore, except to the Bryant family, and to all the other families who, at this time some of the names have been released and some of them haven’t… so I apologize. But to everyone out there affected by this, may God had his peace in your heart.
