Sports Betting Brings in Remarkably Less Money to DC

A tax revenue gain from permitted sports betting has failed to happen in Washington, D.C.

The D.C. Council first voted in 2018 to regulate sports betting, providing tens of millions of dollars in new tax revenue.

Since then, those earnings predictions have been reduced downward due to court fights, startup expenses, the coronavirus pandemic, and other problems that have caused sports betting in the District to stall. It had the potential for a spectacular start, but it failed to get going.

As funding in Virginia surges and sports betting is set to come to Maryland, pressure may be growing on the District to make changes.

At a budget oversight hearing held by the DC Council Committee on Business and Economic Development on Thursday, lottery officials confirmed that D.C. had “right around $230,000 in revenues” through the first three quarters of the fiscal year, according to Craig Lindsey, interim Chief Operating Officer of the D.C. Lottery.

Sports betting was expected to bring in more than $6 million, according to the city’s most current forecasts. The city is expected to quadruple that figure in the coming fiscal year, according to estimates.

It resulted in nearly 45 minutes of questions and statements that left committee face Councilman Kenyan McDuffie baffled — and less than confident in the answers he heard.

Throughout the interview, Ridgely Bennett, the D.C. Lottery’s general counsel, quoted D.C. The GambetDC app would experience an increase in use when more tourists returned, and more commuters returned to the city’s workplace, especially from areas like Virginia, which already offers mobile betting.

An argument that, while it may have been true in D.C. in coming days, is fully refuted everywhere else in the country where sports betting is allowed, including Las Vegas and New Jersey — where such verification procedures haven’t hampered anything.

In April simply, Virginia’s competitive mobile betting industry produced over $1 million in additional tax income for the state’s regular fund.