Katie Castellani
State House News Service

As sports betting has taken off, with associated taxes filling up state coffers, some elected officials on Beacon Hill want new guardrails on gambling and certain types of betting. 

Senators on the Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies on Friday quietly released with a favorable report legislation (S 302) sponsored by Sen. John Keenan of Quincy. The vote was 5-0.

Also known as The Bettor Health Act, the bill aims to address harms that can come with wagering. It also bans sports betting ads during televised sporting events as well as in-play and proposition bets. Prop bets are wagers on specific occurrences or statistical outcomes that are independent of the game's final score or result and have been at the center of recent scandals among college and professional athletes.

“We unleashed an industry that now promotes betting on anything and everything imaginable and unimaginable all over the world, 24 hours a day, every single day,” Keenan said at a Nov. 13 committee hearing on his bill. "I want to publicly apologize to those who've lost the opportunity to sit and watch a game just for the enjoyment of the game, I want to apologize to those who find themselves in the dark spaces of betting addiction, and to those working through recovery and to their families and friends. I want to apologize to those who have lost loved ones to suicide because of gambling issues."

Gamblers can suffer bankruptcy, divorce and job loss, Keenan said, and the effects of their behavior can extend to friends and families.

The bill also raises the state excise tax from 20% of gross receipts on online and mobile wagering to 51%, Keenan said, the same level as New York, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. The bill requires online sports betting companies to double their contributions to the state Public Health Trust Fund. 

As of January, the state had collected more than $408 million in taxes and assessments from sports wagering operators since the industry launched in Massachusetts on Jan. 31, 2023. 

The bill legalizing sports betting was passed in the summer of 2022. The Senate that session was slower than the House to embrace sports betting but ultimately agreed to the final law.

Mark Gottlieb, executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University, supported the bill in November. He said sports betting inundates people with notification messages and advertisements. 

“It is the single best example I’ve seen of state legislation to revisit the parameters of sports gambling in light of rapid changes we’ve seen in how these products are designed, marketed and delivered since H5164 became law in 2022,” he said. 

Former Gov. Charlie Baker signed the 2022 law. Now president of the NCAA, he has called for a ban on prop bets in college sports. In a January letter to state gaming commissions, Baker said the NCAA has opened investigations into potential game manipulation by about 40 student-athletes across 20 schools in the last year. He said 11 student-athletes from seven schools have been found to have wagered on their own performances, shared information with betters, or participated in game manipulation.

Sens. Barry Finegold, Nick Collins, John Cronin, Paul Mark and Peter Durant voted in favor of the bill while Sen. Paul Feeney did not vote yes or no, and Sen. Liz Miranda did not vote at all, according to a Senate clerk.

The bill's next stop is the Senate Ways and Means Committee. That panel can push important bills to the floor of the Senate for votes but is also inundated with bills and has traditionally been a graveyard for legislation.