March Madness Begins As Massachusetts Sports Gambling Is In Limbo

BOSTON (CBS) - At Boston bars Thursday, if people weren't there to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, they were there to watch March Madness.

"It's happening," one bargoer said. "Why not just make it legal?" He's talking about sports betting in Massachusetts. Neighboring states New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York all allow some level of sports betting, while a bill hangs in limbo in the Bay State.

Governor Baker has expressed support for sports gambling here, too, tweeting this on Super Bowl Sunday last month.

The effort to approve sports gambling legislation in Massachusetts is years old. In 2019, Senator Paul Feeney told WBZ, "My sense is that over the next couple of months, that there will be robust discussions in both the House and the Senate."

Flash forward three years exactly, and no such bill has passed. In summer 2021, the Massachusetts House approved a sports betting bill, with only three representatives voting against it. Since then, the bill has been sitting in the Senate Ways and Means Committee waiting for review.

WBZ reached out to several senators on the committee, but they were either unavailable for comment or didn't respond to requests for comment.

"I think people are going to do it anyway so might as well get some taxes on it," Danny Lambriola of Boston told WBZ. "I'm not a huge better myself but I'm a big basketball fan."

"You have all these people driving up to New Hampshire, putting their bets in across the border," added Liam McCarthy of Braintree. "Why let that happen? Have it happen here…There is so much tax benefit from it."