Sports betting in Washington state remains in-person only after a legal challenge to the state’s tribal control over sports betting was tossed by a Federal judge earlier this week.
U.S. District Court Judge David Estudillo dismissed an antitrust challenge petitioned by cardroom operator Maverick Gaming. The lawsuit challenged the sports betting agreements that currently exist with the Washington state tribes.
Estudillo tossed the lawsuit out because he said that the Shoalwater Bay tribe needed to be included as they would be affected by the outcome of the lawsuit. The tribe could not be included due to their sovereign status.
“Given this history, and the economic and sovereign rights implicated by Maverick’s suit, the Court agrees that Shoalwater is ‘necessary, and if not susceptible to joinder, indispensable to litigation seeking to decimate that contract’,” Estudillo said.
The dismissal of the lawsuit means that any expansion of sports betting in the state to include mobile betting is once again dead. There remains a possibility that legislative action by the state government could push through mobile betting, but it would fly in the face of amended compacts that the native tribes signed with the state in 2020 after sports betting was legalized in the state.
Under those compacts sports betting can only take place in-person at tribal casinos.
According to Maverick Gaming CEO Eric Persson the company will appeal the decision and is willing to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court is necessary.