
It’s the moment that many sports fans in the Green Mountain State have been waiting for, as sports betting in Vermont has been given the green light to go ahead in 2024. This comes after the state’s governor, Phil Scott, signed the bill for legal sports betting that was approved by the Vermont state legislature.
As a result, anyone over the age of 21 years in the Green Mountain State will be able to legally enjoy betting on sport from the early part of 2024. It makes Vermont the 38th state to permit sports betting, although it’s worth noting that there won’t be any physical sportsbooks, as all bets must be taken in the online domain.
The state has lagged behind neighboring states such as Massachusetts who have recently legalized sports betting, and it promises to bring much needed tax revenues into the state coffers.
As state governor, Scott was one of the main advocates for the legalization of sports betting in Vermont over the past few years. He was pivotal in encouraging the legislature to come to an agreement so that sports fans in the state could enjoy sports betting in a way that was legal and benefited from the relevant customer protection.
Now that the go-ahead has been given to legal sports betting in the Green Mountain State, it falls to the state’s Department of Liquor and Lottery to oversee the rollout of the changes. This includes issuing sports betting licenses to six online sportsbooks to operate within the state.
As a result, this July will see the Department issuing requests for the proposals from the potential operators, and the operators will then be expected to bid for the licenses throughout August.
Following this, September will see the Department evaluating the bids from the prospective sportsbooks before negotiating and executing the relevant contracts until the end of the year.
Once this has been done, the first legal Vermont sportsbooks will be expected to start taking bets as early as January next year. This means that sports fans in the Green Mountain State could realistically download a sportsbook app and place their bets in time for the NFL playoffs.
However, there remain a number of legal hoops to jump through before this happens. This is all the more true considering the fact that Vermont doesn’t have any pre-existing casino relaxation and there remains the pressing issue over how much tax will be enforced on the operators.
The bill that passed through the Vermont state legislature suggested that any legal sportsbook will be expected to pay a minimum of 20% of their total revenues back to the state. This could have a big impact on the kinds of operators who will apply for a license to operate within the Green Mountain State. But with an expected $2 million in tax revenues due in 2024, it looks like things are looking up for sports betting in Vermont.
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