TULSA, OKLA. (KTUL) — Oklahoma lawmakers are working to make sports betting legal in Oklahoma.

We reached out to a casino here in town and spoke with an economist about the impact legalizing sports gambling would have on the tribes and the state.

“We absolutely want sports betting. We invested a lot of money in this facility on the assumption that sports betting would eventually be legalized,” said Pat Crofts, the CEO of Muscogee Nation Gaming Enterprises.

Crofts says he isn’t too familiar with the bills in legislation, but he says that sports betting is something they need.

“The tribes all want sports betting. We have customers asking about it here on a daily basis. This is something that we need to offer our guests,” said Crofts.

NewsChannel 8 also reached out to the Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association and received a statement from their chairman saying in part that the “… association will continue to monitor the progress of any bills whose proposed actions pertain to tribal gaming on behalf of our Tribal Nation members. This includes the bills introduced this legislative session.”

But as we’ve reported in the past, bills aiming to legalize sports betting have failed in legislation in previous years because of a lack of agreement between the state and tribes on how sports gambling would work in Oklahoma.

We reached out to the governor’s office asking if there’s been an update on the state negotiating such an agreement.

They responded with a text message saying there was no update.

They also acknowledged a couple of bills in legislation aiming to make sports betting legal, and they said, “Any bill that only allows sports betting licenses for tribal entities is a no-go for the governor.”

Neil Metz, a professor of Economics at the University of Central Oklahoma says sports betting might not be as beneficial for the tribes and state as one may think.

He says that it may not increase casinos’ overall revenue by a sizeable amount.

And he says that in most instances, sports gambling is taxed at a lower rate than the rest of casino gambling, and he says if people switch from table games to slots, that could mean less tax revenue for the state.

“The study they did in West Virginia, the amount of overall tax revenue from sports gambling, there was some increase from nothing. But that increase was less than the decrease from slot machines loss in tax revenue,” said Metz.

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