Commercial online sports betting operators and California’s tribal casino operators have been competing in California with their respective Prop 27 and Prop 26 bills. At stake is the Golden State’s sports betting market, which statisticians estimate could generate up to $30bn in sports wagers per year.
Advocates for and against each measure have raised a record total of $470m for their marketing campaigns. Despite this, it seems that both parties in this expensive duel are set to face defeat in November’s public vote, according to a new poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS).
In an intriguing twist, the adverts seemed to have harmed public perception of both Prop 27 and Prop 26. Likely voters who said they had seen many adverts about the propositions were more opposed to the measures than those who had not seen any ads.
Berkeley IGS poll director Mark DiCamillo commented: “I think it’s the negative advertisements that have been turning voters away. People who haven’t seen the ads are about evenly divided, but people who’ve seen a lot of ads are against it. So, the advertising is not helping.”
Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego, believes that Californians have a proclivity to support Tribal communities. He said they wanted tribes to benefit from legalized gambling as part of a “social contract on gaming in California.”
However, Prop 26’s ‘negative’ ad campaign may well have undermined its own. A spokesman for the Prop 27 ballot campaign, Nathan Click, commented: “Prop 27 has taken over $100m in misleading and false attacks. It’s telling these same opponents funding these ads haven’t spent a dime supporting their own sports betting proposal, Prop 26.”
Only 28% of GOP voters supported Prop 26 and half opposed it while a majority of both Democrats and Republicans polled opposed Prop 27. From the evidence of these results, it seems that both parties have wasted $470m in their campaigns.
