Chicago Sun-Times political reporter Mitchell Armentrout joined Springfield's Morning News to discuss mobile gaming regulation and if the legislature will fund a new stadium for the Chicago Bears.
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Nothing says St. Patrick's Day like a guy named Pfingsten and a guy named Armentrout, a couple of German names. Good morning, Mitchell Armentrout from the Sun-Times. How are you, buddy? Top of the morning to you. Glad to be here. Is the Green River dying kind of the most overrated thing in the world, or is it just me?

You know, I haven't gone downtown to actually see it happen in a few years. You know, from an environmental perspective, questionable, but I think it's fun. I'm with it. You know, it's usually pretty green anyway. So exactly. All right. So a little more neon. So Mitch covers politics for the Chicago Sun times. You've had a couple of interesting stories the last couple of days. So let's get to some of those first, before we, we talk about the legislature coming back this week. You had a story about a,

fantasy sports the the the draft king sort of thing kind of kicked this off and now there's a new one called prize picks i guess first before we get into it what is this and what's going on right so you got this uh you know there's been a lot of talk about gambling of all kinds in springfield for forever it seems like uh and daily fantasy sports is one that's really kind of

been a legal gray area for uh more than a decade you know this is kind of what started the first beef between uh the casinos in illinois the brick and mortar casinos in illinois that have been around for uh upwards of 30 years uh and draft kings and fan duel these companies that you know have been operating as legal sports books for the last five years but they

They showed up in Illinois back around 2012 with Daily Fantasy Sports, which essentially lets you draft a fantasy team of players like you would sort of in your office pool, except you're competing for cash stakes on a single day. So if that sounds a lot like normal betting to you, well, that's what a lot of other folks have, too, for a long time,

So the Illinois gaming board actually sent out a batch of cease and desist letters to a lot of these daily fantasy sports companies that have been around for, you know, a long time now, but yeah,

you know, the likes of DraftKings and FanDuel, now they're legit. They've got state licenses that are really expensive to get, and now they run straight-up sports books, like the ones you see in Las Vegas, except you play them on your phone. These other companies like PrizeFix don't. And again, it looks a lot like parlay betting, but for really technical reasons, you know, there's an argument to be made that it's not gambling. The Illinois Gaming Board disagrees heartily, and

And, you know, Price picks for their part. They've changed the games that they offer to kind of fall more in line with an Illinois Supreme Court decision that said that Daily Fantasy is not illegal. So now they just kind of it's it's sort of a legal limbo that's going to keep on playing out until state legislators actually decide.

Form some sort of law to regulate it, which is what price picks wants. They said they want to be regulated and taxed. So is price picks doing what DraftKings and FanDuel do anyway with the... I don't know if FanDuel and DraftKings even spend much time on the...

the daily fantasy thing anymore, just considering that they do have brick and mortar. They do have the apps. They do have that sort of thing now, but are they still even doing the, the daily fantasy thing that, that caused that, that hubbub 10, 12 years ago? Yeah, no fan duel and draft games are definitely still doing it. You know, it's a really popular game. Uh, it's, it's,

You know, I personally don't play, but I've got a lot of friends who do. They say it's fun. You know, it's it's kind of like, you know, sort of the hobbyism of having a fantasy team. You know, there's kind of the more traditional kind that you think of where you're playing for a full season. If you're a real baseball nerd like I am, I've been like three fantasy baseball drafts this past weekend.

But, you know, quicker turnaround in a single day, a little more cash payout, a little more excitement, and maybe a little bit less straightforwardly legal as we're finding in Illinois. But again, it's hard to say exactly how much

or what portion of the business it is for DraftKings and FanDuel these days because they don't have to report any of these numbers to any government agency. So we don't really know exactly how much money they're making. We know that they're really raking it in when it comes to just normal over-under kind of sports betting. They've made hundreds of, I believe the number is somewhere around $700 million plus in gross revenue between the two companies over the past two years. And that's just in Illinois. They're operating in

more than 30 states across the country. You know, it's just a booming industry. It's really hard to exaggerate just how much money they're raking in on this. You know, I have Mitch Armentrout from the Sun-Times joins us here on 92.7 WMAY. I have one of the sports betting apps on my phone and

And I enjoy it. You know, I don't ever bet more than like 10, 20 bucks a game, right? Like I'm not a degenerate by any means, but I do it for fun here and there. Can't bet on Illinois games, which is probably a good thing because I'm a real freak when we get into those. But this has proven to be an economic winner for the state generally. Is it bringing in the kind of revenue? Is sports betting bringing in the kind of revenue that people thought it would?

You know, it's actually bringing in more revenue than at least a lot of state legislators expected. And that's one reason that last year, Governor Pritzker slapped a

much higher graduated tax system on these bigger companies. Essentially, the companies like FanDuel and DraftKings, they're getting-- this is a tax that they fought tooth and nail last year. And the state ended up, I believe, in the first year-- the first several-- the first full-- it took a while for this industry to really kind of get its legs.

But by a couple of years ago, you know, this was about $100 million or so a year in tax revenue for the state, which is, again, a really big injection. It ain't nothing, right? Yeah. I mean, we're talking deficits. It's real money.

And now this new graduated system that Governor Pritzker slapped on him last year, you know, now the number is upwards of $300 million. So as these industries grow, you would expect to see that number keep on going up. And, you know, the argument from the daily fantasy sports companies, the ones that the Illinois Gaming Board has sort of thrown the flag at, is,

they, they say, Hey, you know, we're making, we are making a lot of money here. Uh, and you know, we want to be legit and, you know, the state can, if they take 15% off the top and that's, you know, there's not really any hard estimate on how much it would bring in, but that's more gambling revenue for the state, which, uh, as we've seen is, uh, something lawmakers are generally happy to roll around in. And there's a push now to, to even expand that more with, with this, I gaming this, this Edgar Gonzalez bill that would allow, uh,

I don't know if table games is the right way, but that's kind of the best way I can describe it of, of regular, like almost casino betting on your phone. What's the status of that?

Yeah, exactly. This is a bill that has been batted around and pushed by online gaming companies like, again, Panduel and DraftKings. You can see kind of a pattern here because these are games that they can roll out on the sports betting apps that you have on your phone. In several, I believe seven other states, they've also got casino games. Like he says, you can play poker on your phone, roulette, or just a regular old slot machine. Yeah.

And again, a lot of these games are available on illegal offshore apps that are also available on your phone, but they're not state-sanctioned. And the argument from the industry is, again, let's throw some state, let's tax it, let's regulate it, offer some assurances for Illinois customers that they're not going to see their money swept away by some illegal company offshore. But the argument against it is that

You know, is this going to take away revenue from the brick and mortar casinos? Is it going to eat into the profits of the video gaming terminals that you see in truck stops and restaurants and bars all across the state? There's more than 40,000 of those already. And of course, you know, it's easy to forget, but

incredibly addictive, these types of games. Experts say, you know, I talked to one expert who compared it to gambling fentanyl, which is kind of dramatic, but, you know, it's sort of hard to

exaggerate just how many gambling options there are. And, you know, when you've got that right in the palm of your hand, that creates a real problematic temptation for a certain percentage of the population. Well, it's going to be really interesting to see the long-term impact on the brick and mortars, because even like that new Bally's casino in the city, which I know is just a temporary facility right now, but those numbers are not

hitting expectations by any means. So I think there's probably an argument to be made that it could negatively impact the brick and mortars. I mean, like, think about the Rivers Casino out in the suburbs, which has this huge sportsbook, but how much of that sportsbook gaming is actually being done on phones? I mean, it's got to be taking actual foot traffic out of the casino.

Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, it's kind of interesting. The offer from the companies that want to see Internet gambling legalized, they're saying, hey, the casinos can get in on this. We can we can set up the licensing process like we do with sports books. And that would mean that the online gambling company would have to partner with.

a physical brick and mortar casino to offer these games there. And, you know, then they would kind of split the, the pot, so to speak. Um, so interesting to see if that, you know, carries any favor. Um, but for now, uh,

Yeah, the owners of the physical casinos and a lot of these bars and restaurants that depend on those slot machines to help supplement their revenue, they're pretty dead set against this. It looks, based on the House hearing that we watched last week, it seems like there's not a lot of room for compromise at least at this point.

So it kind of seems like a long shot that they'll be able to get anything done this session. Mitch Armantrout from the Chicago Sun-Times. Before we let you go, there's a new push for a downtown-ish stadium for the Bears. I guess, one, who's behind this? And two, there's still going to be a push for...

a crap ton of state funding, the governor, the Senate president, and to a lesser extent, the speaker, but still the speaker have all kind of said, thanks, but no thanks in terms of the money they're looking for from the state. What are we looking at here with the stadium proposal and what they want from the state?

Well, we're looking at another set of really dazzling renderings of a big shiny dome on the lakefront. This would be at the former Michael Reese hospital site at 31st street and Lakeshore drive. So, you know, about a couple of miles south of soldier field as it stands today. Sort of in the area of the White Sox park, right? Cause that's 35th and the Dan Ryan. Yeah, basically just a mile or so East. And yeah,

You know, this is not a pitch that the Bears have thrown their support behind. This property has essentially kind of been an albatross for the city of Chicago for more than a decade. This is the property that former Mayor Richard M. Daley bought to...

potentially be like an Olympic village when we were in the running for the 2016 summer games that we lost pretty quickly. But that's going way back in history. You know, the developer, Scott Goodman of Farpoint Development, he's been trying to find a really big use for this property for a long time. And, you know, my colleague, France Fieldman, spoke with him and he basically said, you know, the bears have not really thrown their full support behind this, but they're

He just wants people to see what could be done there, what he thinks could be done there. And, you know, it's an ambitious vision. It's, again, this is like a narrow strip of land, which is one reason that the Bears have said that they can't do anything there. But Goodman says they can put the stadium there. They can build some mixed-use retail and apartments and basically build this really, you know, kind of dazzling sort of park that bridges Lakeshore Drive over to the lakefronts.

You know, it's a big vision, but like you said, Patrick, I mean, it's also a very expensive vision and it's hard to put a lot of stock in the numbers that they put together. I mean, obviously developers are happy to put together a lot.

He says that this will be cheaper than the alternative that the Bears are still behind, which is a new stadium just south of Soldier Field. Again, state lawmakers have not really come on board with any of this because it would require hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding or extending state hotel taxes that

Really, there's just not much appetite for in a tough budget year. So this is kind of the latest Hail Mary, and we'll see if the Bears end up taking the easiest route at this point, which...

Feels a lot like Arlington Heights, but they are not saying that yet. No, I mean, and the thing with the Reese side, like it's, if the only, the only place harder to get to than soldier field would be this site, right? Just because there's so few public transit options. It's, it's, it's, you can't drive there. It's such a pain in the butt to get down that way. It's, I think you're right. That, that Arlington Heights is, is likely to be the most realistic site.

venue for a new stadium, my money continues to be on the fact that the Bears continue to play at Soldier Field for the foreseeable future.

Yeah. And there's no big rush for me. No, they're under lease for another, I believe eight years. It takes a few years to build a stadium. And obviously maybe they'll head down to your beloved champagne for a couple of years. Maybe we'll do that again. I think that ship has sailed after they did that 20 years ago. So probably not happening again anytime soon. I, my guess is they, they, they would play in soldier field until, until the bitter end. So.

Or at least until the new stadium would be open. If they can... I mean, the thing is, the McCaskies aren't as independently wealthy as the Stan Kroenke, who was able to build SoFi on his own. Right. So they just don't have the cash sitting around to build a stadium by themselves. That's where they run into needing state help. And the state doesn't have the money, so it's just a complete mess. Long story short...

Ain't nothing happening anytime soon. How's that? All right, Mitch Armantrout from the Chicago Sun-Times. Appreciate all your work, Mitch, and we'll talk to you again soon. Have a great one, Patrick. Thank you.