(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s sports wagering bill and a name, image and likeness bill that will send $15 million annually to the University of Wisconsin athletics departments while exempting athletics spending or revenue from public records requirements were both formally sent to Gov. Tony Evers, leaving him one week to decide if he will sign or veto them with an option to partially veto the NIL bill because it includes an appropriation or state funds.
The sports wagering bill passed the Senate with a 21-12 vote with nine Republicans voting against it.
Evers’ administration will now have to negotiate updated compacts with the state’s 11 tribes and then send those compacts to the federal government to be approved before online sports wagering in the state can begin.
Evers has stated that he would want all of the tribes on board with the change before approving the plan.
“This bill fundamentally expands gambling in Wisconsin, while massively profiting tribes, by allowing people to download and place a bet on a computer or mobile device through an app tied to a tribe with a casino,” Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, wrote in his newsletter about the bill. “Most of us have the common sense to see the dangers of expanding legalized gambling, including the social and financial harm. I voted no, along with a significant number of Republican colleagues.”
The proposal would change the state’s definition of “bet” to allow the state’s tribes to offer mobile sports wagering if the bettor is in Wisconsin and the sportsbook servers are on tribal land, an amendment to current compacts allowing for casino gambling and sports wagering on tribal lands despite the state’s ban on betting.
The law would allow for a similar sports wagering model as Florida, where the state’s sportsbook operators have servers on federally recognized tribal lands while users can be in the state of Wisconsin.
The NIL bill passed the Senate on a 17-16 vote.
UW-Madison Athletics Director Chris McIntosh said in committee that the $14.6 million in funding annually to the school’s athletic department for facilities debt is essentially for the athletic department to remain competitive and supporting 23 sports and 600-plus athletes. He said that women’s and Olympic sports were at stake related to the bill.
The Badgers’ football program accounted for 80% of the program’s revenue, equaling $113.6 million last fiscal year, according to the NCAA report, which showed the football program brought in $72 million in excess during the year.
The Wisconsin Newspaper Association warned lawmakers and the public that a public records stipulation in the bill could have a sweeping unintended impact that goes well beyond NIL records.
The bill would exempt records related to the “generation, deployment, or allocation of revenue generated by an intercollegiate athletic program.”
“AB 1034 would not only codify NIL into state law but hand over more record funding to UW-Madison, this time dumping your tax dollars into a bottomless pit of college athlete recruitment,” Kapenga wrote. “But it gets worse. Under the bill, student athletes and the UW athletic department are now exempt from open records requests, raising significant questions about transparency. I voted no to one of the more absurd wastes of taxpayer dollars I’ve seen in a long time.”
