Sports betting could be coming to Oklahoma in the future — and, given how much of the state is considered to be tribal reservation land, much of the wagering could be online.
That’s according to Ryan Butler, senior editor at sports-betting website Covers. Butler began covering sports betting for the site in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision striking down a national ban on the practice. Most recently, Butler has been following the paths of House Bill 1047 and Oklahoma House Bill 1101, both of which passed the House with bipartisan support but have stalled in the Senate.
The first bill would grant tribes exclusive access to sports betting in the state. The second would turn the matter over to a citizen referendum. If either bill makes it into law, the subsequent market could be massive because of how large tribal presences are within the state, Butler said. He spoke with Tribal Business News in late April to share his predictions and a look ahead.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
So sports betting could be on the horizon for Oklahoma?
Yeah, it's been a long time coming. There has been interest in Oklahoma for sports betting since 2018 when the Supreme Court overturned the federal ban and allowed each individual state to do so.
At this point, 39 of the states have legalized sports betting and Oklahoma is one of the kind of surprising holdouts in some ways, especially when you consider all the tribal casinos there.
What’s taken so long?
The idea, specifically from the tribes, is to do it the right way. It's to run it through them, and not any other outside groups, not the lottery, not the horse tracks, not the Oklahoma City Thunder. That's really been their position, and it's really been that they’d rather have no sports betting than have it where it's wide open to every entity beyond the tribes.
Even if these bills were to pass the Senate in the future, they still have to be signed into law.
Gov. Kevin Stitt has opposed these bills from the very beginning and is starting to veto them. So if they do make it out of the Senate, there's still the possibility of a veto. There's also a possibility that they could override it. The House passed it by a roughly two to one margin, which means they would be able to override it if it gets to that point.
That might explain the two bills, too, right?
One of the bills legalized sports betting directly, and the other would be able to supersede the governor and put it on a ballot measure in 2026 and have voters approve it.
From what you’ve seen, would voters support that ballot measure?
I would say we’ve had six or seven states that have put sports betting measures to the voters, and all but one - California - has passed them, usually with some pretty big margins. There’s just a lot of interest in sports betting. People are already doing it through bookies or through offshore sites, and they want to do it now in Oklahoma.
Would you expect any kind of staunch opposition, outside of the governor, to a referendum?
You could see potential entities that don’t want exclusivity, like the ones I mentioned before - the horse tracks, the Oklahoma City Thunder, but there’s no guarantee any of them would try to push that. The other factor is that if anyone is mad about this or feels they have a compelling case, they could try to stop it just through public opinion or a marketing campaign, which is what we saw in California.
Tribes in California stopped campaigning for their own referendum to stop a proposition that would have allowed non-exclusive gaming, which is in keeping with what you said about “no sports betting if there’s no exclusivity.”
A big reason why the California sports betting effort failed was the tribes got together and spent tens of millions of dollars opposing the campaign, and that resonated very well in California. So we could see that, but if there was a high dollar opposition campaign, I think tribes here would also spend a lot of money to counter it. I don’t see any opposition groups being strong enough - if this goes to the ballot, I favor the tribes getting it passed.
Once the law is in place, what does sports betting in Oklahoma look like? Is it mainly online or do you see sportsbooks going up at brick and mortar locations?
It’s interesting, because most of Oklahoma is tribal lands, so I’d expect there to be online sports betting offerings.
To be very clear, it’s not what some people call online casinos or iGaming - there’s no digital slots or online table games like blackjack. It’s just sports betting, but it can be online because of Oklahoma’s land base — even if sports betting has to take place on tribal land, that’s most of the state.
