Raynham Park’s Massachusetts Sports Betting License Application Woes Continue

• The Massachusetts Gaming Commission said it will not move forward with Raynham Park application 
• The MGC declared Raynham Park needs to have a partnership with a sports betting operator for its retail sportsbook
• Caesars pulled out of its partnership with Raynham Park last week

Raynham Park’s application for a Massachusetts sports betting license has been put on hold by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) until the group can come back to the table with a sports betting operator partnership for its retail sportsbook.

After a nearly seven hour meeting, members of the MGC told the Massasoit Greyhound Association (MGA), owner of Raynham Park, that it must have a partnership with a sports betting operator to run its retail sportsbook before its application hearing for a category 2 license can continue. .

Raynham Park and Caesars Sportsbook agreed to a partnership in January for a 30,000-square-foot retail sportsbook at the simulcast racing facility, but the MGA revealed last week that Caesars had dropped out of its partnership.

Will MGA Move Forward With Application?

MGC Chair Cathy Judd-Stein noted her concern at the amount of time the application hearing was taking and seemed to be willing to move forward on the suitability hearing, but her fellow commissioners disagreed. This was the fifth MGC meeting since June to discuss the MGA license application.

Commissioner Eileen O’Brien said that without a sports betting operator partnership, there was no way the MGC could find MGA as potentially suitable for a category 2 sports betting license.

Before adjourning for the day, Judd-Stein allowed the MGA to comment on the proceedings. MGA General Counsel Jed Nosal may have cast some doubt on the MGA actually moving forward in the commonwealth with the application.

“I don’t have an answer on the timing of next steps, or to be quite frank, if there will be any,” he said.

MGA Did Score One Victory

Despite the non-vote on the application, the MGA did score a victory in the process as it was allowed to remove Christopher J. Carney as an individual qualifier on its license application. The request for withdrawal was submitted to the MGC in late July but came after the Massachusetts Investigations Enforcement Bureau (IEB) completed its suitability report for Raynham Park’s license application.

Questions about Carney’s official position with Raynham Park and MGA were raised by the MGC. While the MGA said Carney had no official position with the company, several commissioners questioned whether he was “integrally intertwined” within its business.

Through his own words, O’Brien said, Carney represented himself as having “significant power and influence” within the MGA. She also noted that there is evidence he represented himself as a company official when the MGA was before government before.

“Chris Carney is signing formal documentations to public bodies representing MGA and the MGA was totally fine with that. If this body, or any other adjudicatory body, was restricted to paperwork, I shudder to think what suitability analyses would look like if you couldn’t look at the actual facts on the ground. We are tasked with looking at the facts in front of us, not a tortured analysis of corporate law that tries to hamper this commission,” she said.

Despite several instances in the media where Carney identified himself as having a role in the company, the MGA said there was nothing legal tying him to the company as having any type of power.

The MGC agreed to remove him by a 4-1 vote, with O’Brien voting against, as a qualified individual from the application as long as all of his ties to the MGA and Raynham Park are severed.