New York has sports betting already, but the options available still aren’t capturing the attention of the Big Apple. To do that, they’ll need mobile betting, and State representative J. Gary Pretlow is advocating for a bill that would provide that. He spoke with our Becky Liggero Fontana recently on why New York needs to get there.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAaiEasRjX4?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

While the state doesn’t lack for sports betting, residents of New York City have a hard time accessing it. “Right now we have sports betting at our standalone casinos; there are only four of them and they’re all upstate,” Pretlow said. “The closest one to New York City is 90 miles away. That leads people that live in the city to go across the bridge or through the tunnel, go to Jersey and play sports bets. What our intention is, we in the legislature, our intention now is to at least have two downstate casinos, Aqueduct and Yonkers Raceway, but our ultimate goal is to have statewide or intrastate mobile sports betting. That’s where the money is, that’s where all the bets that will be made. And most of Jerseys bets are made on the mobile device.”

The New York State Assembly could pass a sports betting bill, but it wants to pass the perfect bill. “What we’ve really wanted to do is make a bill that would be the national model,” he said. “It was stated earlier that every state has a different law. Well what we would really like to do is make this local law in New York that is so good that every state will then follow that.”