Despite concerns that the latest version of a legal sports betting bill still needs major work, Minnesota’s Senate Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee moved SF 1949 to the Committee on Taxes on Tuesday afternoon.

The bill, which would legalize retail and online sports betting with the tribes in charge, was met with plenty of apprehension, even from groups that support legal wagering.

Sen. Zach Duckworth called out his colleagues, and some witnesses, who pushed to move the bill along before details were solidified. Duckworth said he wanted the issue of whether or not horse racetracks would be included in the legislation and the status of charitable gaming to be solved in committee. He said he believed the lawmakers were the “closest we have ever been” on the gambling bill but that he doesn’t believe the bill is ready to move.

“I believe this is the committee to do the work, so I’m not necessarily in favor of moving it forward,” Duckworth said late in the hearing. “I do believe the tracks need to be given a fair shot and I think they need to have some certainty.

“We’re telling people right now as it relates to these two issues that we will figure it out, it’s not going to be today, it’s not going to be right here in the Commerce Committee … but we’ll just get on to figuring it out. I don’t think that was a transparent strategy that worked last year, so I am a little doubtful it will work this year. I don’t think it is appropriate governing. I think it’s a poor way for the legislature to govern to just move bills along and promise changes in other committees.”

Duckworth’s colleagues did not agree and sent the bill ahead.

Minnesota lawmakers have been down this road multiple times. A House proposal to legalize and give the tribes a monopoly has passed that chamber more than once, only to reach the Senate and have the tracks added in. At that point, the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association (MIGA) has previously withdrawn support. It’s likely they would do the same this time around.

Andy Platto, the executive director for MIGA, said that his group has been watching and monitoring sports betting legalization across the U.S. since the Professional and Amateur Protection Act was overturned in 2018. He was clear that some of the “policy changes [to the Minnesota proposal] are of serious concern to tribal leaders,” though he did not specify which changes.

Jeremy Kudon, who represents the Sports Betting Alliance, testified that his group also supports the general idea of legalization, but is definitively opposed to an amendment that would ban in-game wagers.

“This amendment is nothing short of a gift” to the black market, Kudon said. He said that in-game wagering accounts for 50% of sports bets made in the U.S. market and that by eliminating them, tax revenue could be cut in half.

With regard to including the tracks in the mix, Mike Cronin, the executive director for the Horsemen’s Benevolent & Protective Association, said that in the “righteous pursuit of trying to address previous sins of the state against Native Americans” the result would be “to destroy the livelihood of an entire class of people and their culture, and that would be ironically tragic.”

The bill was originally introduced on Feb. 20, 2023, and has undergone multiple revisions. It sets the legal betting age at 21, would not allow accounts to be funded by credit card, includes prohibitions on advertising and marketing to minors and other vulnerable populations, and earmarks funds for the Minnesota Racing Association.