2026 Regular Session - Day 50 - Amendment for HB 904 (Full) | Rep. Nick Wilson

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I filed House Floor Amendment 2 to address the issue of sports books limiting bets and bettors. Could you please have the clerk report House Floor Amendment 2? Clerk, please report. House Floor Amendment 2 to House Bill 904. General from Whitley. Sports books are limiting bets from bettors, but not for the reasons you might think. Not because someone lost too much money, not because of fraud, and actually it's the opposite. If somebody's winning, they're more likely to be limited. This issue's been brought to me, brought to my attention from other folks. Some of my friends in Whitley County have talked to me about it, and some of them were very excited when we passed sports gambling. And I remember you about couldn't avoid a commercial, and there were many great offers. I saw one book even had $2,000 in bonus bets, which was an incredible offer. I mean, $2,000, free money, that's amazing. Very quickly, I started getting screenshots of what's called limiting, where somebody would try to make a bet, and the bet is declined. Say, no, you can't wager $100, you can only wager $55, or no, $50's too much. Here, you're allowed to bet $34. In fact, I have had people reach out to me that can't even get down $5 on a bet. And I think when we pass sports gambling, we pass it to allow people to bet, people to win, and people to lose, especially for people to win. It's great. Everybody loves winning a sports bet. I got a message from a guy the other day that he had made a total of six wagers, and his account was suspended by that sports book. So, and I'm sure you can imagine what's happening to the losing bettors. They may be even given an offer or another bonus or another boost. So, one thing I've learned in this job so far is if there's a problem, try to go directly to the source, talk to them. I've talked to some of those in the sports books, industries. I got a couple of different answers. First, some of them, it's not happening, or they say, well, it's not even happening. But I've seen it with my own two eyes. I've seen the screenshots, I've seen the bets attempt to be placed, and they're turned down. Second, they say, well, they like to weed out suspicious activity. And we are in an age of AI, computer algorithms. I understand that. Maybe even a sophisticated sports guru that can find a mismatched line or, for example, if it was supposed to be at plus 150, and instead it got posted at plus 1500. I understand that, but that's not what we're talking about. Like I said, some of my friends had talked to me about this. And the guy I think of most with this bill, he's just a good old country boy from Whitley County. Works for the landscaper. Did some landscaping work. And everybody knows I love baseball, so they come to me about baseball players, baseball pitchers. My good friend there in Whitley County, he couldn't even say the names right of the players. So a gentleman from Jefferson 33, I know you're a Red Sox fan, and you know their great pitching ace, Garrett Crochet, that my friend refers to as Garrett Crotchet. And a gentleman from Barron, the Braves fan, you know how they had Max Fried, who went to the Yankees, a great pitcher, may win Cy Young this year. And Max Fried is referred to as Max Fried. And one time he actually called me, and I was actually so happy, because he told me he was thinking about betting on Jesus. And it made me so happy, and I still witness to him to this day as a religious person. It actually took me a few minutes to realize he was talking about Jesus Lazardo of the Philadelphia Phillies. Gentlemen, I'm giving you quite a bit of latitude. That, Mr. Speaker, the point of that is, it wasn't an AI bot. It wasn't a computer algorithm, and arguably not even a sports guru. It was a guy on a lucky break that got told no. So, Mr. Speaker, House Floor Amendment 2 provides that a book must take a wager. Now, not, the exceptions are suspicious wagering activity. So, the fraud, or the problem gaming when someone is losing or going bankrupt. This doesn't include that. But outside of those, the book must receive a bet, accept a bet, up to $1,000 deposit or a bet. That's what House Floor Amendment 2 does. It's not about fraud. It's not to protect losers. Bettors are being limited because they are winning. And I move for adoption of House Floor Amendment 2 and call for a roll call vote. Motions for the adoption of House Floor Amendment 2. Roll call vote having been called for. General from Edmondson. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the House. You know, the gentleman from Whitley is my good friend. And so, in him being my good friend, I will not say that this amendment is unfriendly. I will also not say that the amendment is friendly either. I have concerns with the amendment. We have a sports wagering marketplace in Kentucky that has really not yet matured. It has done fairly well over the last couple of years since we have legalized the marketplace. But there is, to my knowledge, no other state of the 39 states now that have legalized sports wagering that have adopted a provision like what the gentleman from Whitley is bringing before you today. A $1,000 bet, and I'm not saying anybody shouldn't be able to win, but a $1,000 bet in certain situations could lead to a very, very large win for the customer and loss for the book, depending on what the odds are set at. And I think what you'll find is, in a marketplace like this, with all of the different things that we are currently doing, again, not a very mature marketplace yet, we're moving the age from 18 to 21. That changes the economics of the people that are betting in the system as of today, whether you agree with that or not. It changes the economics for the sportsbooks. We have a huge, huge influx of money being bet in the prediction market space instead of at our licensed sportsbooks right now, because those have been given the green light at the federal level, at least temporarily. And to give you an example, on the Super Bowl, there was 10 times as much money bet at the prediction markets on the Super Bowl as there were bet in licensed sportsbooks across the country. I heard a number, I think the number earlier this week was that Calshi, one of the prediction markets, was expecting a $3 billion week leading into March Madness of money being put into their system. That's a lot of pressure as money moves away from our traditional legal licensed sportsbooks that we have no control over as a state right now. And then the changes with the prop bets. Not a gigantic change there in probably the numbers, but it will have an economic effect on that system as well. And so, again, the gentleman from Whitley is my friend. I hear his concerns. I appreciate that the amendment does have language in there relating to suspicious betting activity, relating to issues like problem gaming that we restrict bettors on and other restrictions that we put out there. Another thing that I left out when we talked about this, we restrict in this bill anyone betting in our online betting system who has child supporter rearages of over $1,000 from being able to bet going forward to protect those families. The gentleman from Jefferson brought that language to us and we put that in the bill. But again, I just have a lot of concerns with making a change like this in the business practices of the licensees who are licensed, who are regulated in a time when we still don't have a mature marketplace on this, in a time when we are doing major, major things to change this. And the national market is doing major, major things to change our licensed and regulated industry. Lady from Jefferson 41, you wish to discuss the amendment? You're recognized to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just have a quick question on your amendment. Where it says that if the bets are suspicious, they'd be banned. Is there an algorithm that can identify what bet is suspicious and what is not? Gentleman from Whitley. These sports books have very complicated. Yes, they have computers that can catch these algorithms that can catch these. I saw a study that they can figure out what kind of better a person is by the time they place two or three bets. So if there is suspicious activity, what I assume they're referring to is especially on the predictive market, prediction market I've seen where somebody will just have a bot place bet, bet, bet, bet, bet, and they've made a thousand bets in one day. So I'm not trying to stop them from preventing that type of behavior. Another example of suspicious activity would be, you know, the fix is in. Somebody's in on it. They know what's going to happen. They place the bet. I'm not trying to stop them from preventing that type of activity. That's why if the book thinks, you know, they have this technology to catch that. If they think it's suspicious, they can limit the bet or ban the account. Lady from Jefferson. I have one little question again. Thank you for that answer. And so would then the sports betting platforms then have different rules for each state? And would they be able to upgrade all of their rules to our state? Gentleman from Whitley. I imagine they could quite easily. This is this is really just stopping them from limiting someone, banning someone just because they've won or just because they're on a lucky streak. And that can easily happen. Just pull away the technologies that calculating the trading, you know, it's saying, no, we can only accept $100 on that bet or something. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you, gentlemen. Chair recognizes General Campbell 67 for discussion on the matter. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just I would like to speak in support of this amendment. You know, this issue kind of first came to my attention. There's a I recommend a podcast by Michael Lewis. It's called Against the Rules. We talked about sports gambling. You can listen to it on your way home tonight or tomorrow afternoon. I mean, and as the gentleman from Whitley rightly pointed out, the people running the sports books, they know us better than we know ourselves. They know who shouldn't be betting, who can't afford to bet, who's in over their head. They know who's really good at it. And they have the pattern has been the way these companies have worked as a target losers. And they ban the winners. And I think this is a good step at writing the show. Thank you. Chair recognizes the lady from Jefferson 37 for discussion on the matter. I just have a question on the amendment. So you've listed here that the sports wagering licensees and service providers may limit the size of frequency or deposits or wagers of any person engaging in sports wagering due to that person's wagering activity. If the wagering activity constitutes suspicious wavering activity or, and this is my question specifically, indicates that a person is a problem or compulsive gambler. So you can answer this however you need to. But what would be the indicator that a person is a problem gambler? Are we saying a problem? And what defines or what defines a problem gambler? I don't know what indicates that the books, the books, they do that. I know there's a lot of self reporting. I just don't want my amendment to prevent the books from stepping in when there is an issue of problem problem gaming. If there's a compulsive gambler that they need to stop, I want I want them to stop that. My amendment has to do with the other issues I've been talking about. Lady from Jefferson. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Motion is the adoption of house for amendment to roll call having been called for those in favor of four amendment to vote aye. Those opposed nay. Local take the role in 54 members voting aye. 13 members voting nay. House bill 90 house floor amendment to is passed. General from Edmondson. Mr. Speaker, again, happy to answer any questions about the bill.