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"Because we waited, we learned a lot," said state Sen. Eric Lesser, the Economic Development Committee chairman. "We learned what works, we learned what doesn't work. We learned what you need to do to make sure you've got a competitive market and a really good product, a high-quality product, for consumers. That's really important."

But Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, one of a handful of senators who have publicly clamored for the branch to consider a betting bill, said Thursday that while he was glad a bill finally emerged, the Ways and Means Committee bill was not the best possible product. 토토사이트

"This bill does demand improvement in the way that it handles the taxation rate, in the way that it deals with advertising and in the way that it deals with collegiate sports, to name a few," he said.

A total ban on collegiate betting would make Massachusetts an outlier among states that offer legal sports wagering. Oregon does not allow any collegiate betting through its commercial operator, but most states that have legalized betting allow at least some wagers on college sports.

The three New England states that have legalized sports betting limit which collegiate events bettors can wager on. Rhode Island and New Hampshire both prohibit bets placed on games played within their states and on games that involve an in-state team. Connecticut has a similar restriction, but it allows "futures" bets on in-state teams, so residents can bet on the UConn Huskies to win the NCAA basketball tournament, but cannot bet on individual UConn games.

The Senate's collegiate betting prohibition also puts the branch at odds with the Massachusetts House and Mariano, who drew a line in the sand on Bloomberg Baystate Business last summer and declared that leaving collegiate betting out of any bill "probably would be" a deal-breaker for him.

Though Baker's own sports betting bill proposed to exclude college sports, he reiterated Wednesday afternoon that he could accept a framework that included betting on college sports because it's already happening in neighboring states.

A survey conducted by the National Council on Problem Gambling in 2018 found that professional football was far and away the most popular sport to bet on in Massachusetts, with 83% of Bay State sports bettors surveyed reporting having put a wager on a pro football game in the previous year. The next most popular sport to bet on in Massachusetts was baseball (32%), followed by college basketball (31%), college football (28%) and professional basketball (19%). The survey, however, did not speak to how much money was wagered on each sport.