Maryland Legal Updates on Sports Betting

By a nearly 2:1 margin, Maryland voters overwhelmingly approved the expansion of sports betting ( titled “The Sports Betting Expansion Measure”) that was on the ballot for 2020. The approval has paved the way for the legalization of sports betting in Maryland at licensed facilities.

Importantly, the ballot explicitly linked the new state revenues derived from the expansion of sports betting towards funding public education. This additional revenue is meant to provide critical additional funding of public education, which has reduced funding because the coronavirus caused a long shutdown of the land based casinos, which yielded an estimated $150 Million  loss to the Education Trust Fund.