Tribes main concern at Michigan online gambling hearing

Michigan’s latest online gambling bill is headed for the state senate floor after a committee overwhelmingly approved the measure.

Wednesday saw the Michigan Senate’s Regulatory Reform Committee vote 7:1 in favor of sending state Sen. Mike Kowall’s SB 203 online gambling bill to the senate floor. The vote wasn’t a surprise, as six committee members were among SB 203’s co-sponsors.

The hearing preceding Wednesday’s vote lasted around 70 minutes, a mercifully brief affair following Tuesday’s online gambling hearing in Pennsylvania, which clocked in at over four hours. It helped that Kowall was the only speaker who faced any questions from the committee, a lack of curiosity that also featured large in the same committee’s 2016 hearing on Kowall’s previous gambling bill.

Michigan’s list of witnesses featured many speakers who’d also appeared in Pennsylvania, offering a palpable sense of déjà vu. Among the repeat offenders were Poker Players Alliance director John Pappas, Amaya Gaming’s Nicholas Menas and the Innovation Group’s Paul Irvin, who predicted the state’s annual tax take from online gambling could total $32m.