Maine Sports Betting to Launch Later This Year

• Maine sports betting will likely launch in November
• Final sports betting rules have been submitted to the Attorney General Office
• Anticipated adoption of the rules will take place in November

More than a year after the Maine sports betting bill was signed into law, the Pine Tree State finally has a launch date in its sights.

Maine’s final sports betting rules have been submitted to the Attorney General Office for legal review. According to the Main Gambling Control Unit, the rules are expected to be approved in November 2023 and sports betting licenses will be issued on the day of approval.

After the licenses are issued, the licenses will go live and Maine sports betting will be eligible for launch.

Long Time Coming for Maine Sports Betting

Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed Maine’s sports betting bill in May 2022 and the legislation officially went into law on August 2022.

State regulators initially predicted Maine’s sports betting rules would take between eight months to a year-and-a-half to draft.

It took the state 14 months to draft the sports betting rules and submit them to the Attorney General Office.

Bill LD 585 gives the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and Maliseet Tribes exclusive control over online sports betting in the state and will also legalize retail sports betting for state casinos and off-track betting establishments. Each tribe can partner with up to one online sportsbook operator.

The tribes will control an estimated 85% of the sports betting market in the state, as online sports betting comprises the vast majority of all sports betting markets. The bill also included concessions to the tribes, such as tax relief and consultation rights with the state for issues that would directly affect their affairs.

The original version of the bill did not include retail sports betting for Maine casinos, shutting out the establishments from the market altogether. However, representatives from Penn National Gaming (Barstool Sportsbook), which owns a casino in Bangor, led a charge to amend the bill. Legislators relented and allowed wording into the document that included retail sports betting, but no online sports betting, for the casinos and off-track betting establishment.

A Multi-Year Process for Legalization

In 2021, Maine legislators approved bill LD 1352, which would have legalized statewide in-person and online sports betting. However, it was never brought to Mills for a signature and it never became law. The bill had a strange journey to approval, as its original sponsor Senator Louis Luchini (D-7) actually spoke up in the 2021 session and asked that legislators vote his bill down. Luchini originally wrote his bill as not having a tethering requirement for online sports betting, which became a controversial point of the betting plan.

Luchini’s original draft of the bill proposed a Maine sports betting plan that would open the state to an uncapped amount of online sports betting licenses that would not have to be tethered or partnered to a brick-and-mortar facility.

Tethering is “anti-competitive and anti-free market,” he explained last year.