PHOENIX – The Arizona CoyotesWant a new state law that allows sports betting to be legalized to allow them continue to run their mobile sports gambling business after they move from Glendale, Arizona to the Arizona State University’s Hockey arena next season.
The Arizona Indian Gaming Association, along with multiple Native American tribes, oppose Tuesday’s last-minute approval by the Arizona Senate’s Appropriations Committee. They say that the 2021 legislation that legalized sports betting was part and parcel of a complex deal that they negotiated with Gov. Doug Ducey updated the tribal gaming compact.
Coyotes claim that the change is necessary because ASU’s arena holds only 5,000 people. The law that allowed professional athletes to run mobile gambling and retail sportsbooks requires facilities to hold at least 10,000.
The Coyotes intend to use the university’s arena three years while they develop a new $1.7billion project, including restaurants and shops as well as apartments and a new hockey arena.
Andrew Diss from the Coyotes, who testified in support of the proposal, said that the Coyotes do not plan to open ASU’s retail shop. Instead, they will just continue operating their mobile gambling businesses. Although he acknowledged that there are questions about whether the law should be changed to allow them to continue operating their online gambling businesses, he said they have received contradictory responses.
Diss stated, “When you ask 10 lawyers the same question, they get 10 different responses.” “That doesn’t give us the comfort of knowing that we will be able maintain our online gaming license in the event we move to a location with less than 10,000 employees. This is the crux of it all.
The Arizona Indian Gaming Association’s attorney said that the law that was passed last year should be kept intact because the Coyotes need a new arena. He claimed that the revised compact that gave Arizona tribes an exclusive right to conduct gambling in Arizona was dependent upon limiting how, when and where sports teams could operate their operations.
Bradley Bledsoe Downes explained to the committee, “That was a compromise made by the tribes and the professional leagues or teams. To go back and alter that understanding, especially less then a year later for something truly self-created… shouldn’t land on this body to address.”
Downs was referring the long-running dispute between Glendale and the Coyotes that caused the city to refuse a renewal of its lease for the Gila River Arena.
Republican Rep. Leo Biasiucci was the one who sponsored Tuesday’s amendment. It stated that the Coyotes would spend $40 million on improvements to ASU’s new multipurpose arena. ASU announced in February that the Coyotes would pay almost $20 million upfront when they sign the deal.
Sonny Borrelli from Lake Havasu City is a Republican who said that tribes’ opposition was just a unnecessary turf war. He called the opposition “ridiculous”, and declared that ASU would win the big prize.
“Seeing this, this resistance from the tribe, can be really upsetting since it doesn’t negatively affect the tribes one inch. None, zero,” Borrelli said. “It’s temporary and it’s moving from one place to another.