Are we finally making gambling legal in NC?

The other thing that is going on this week, aside from the potential of getting a sports gambling bill presented at the state legislature, is that this week is the first live golf event in Mexico.

The first one is this week. Who you got? Who's riding with the high flyers? Who's riding with the with the Majestics? Yeah, you gotta go four aces.

Gotta go four aces. Most people don't even know what I'm talking about. It's fine. All right. To what I watched on my laptop this morning, and many of you may have already seen it on the record, all about the potential for a sports gambling bill through the state legislature.

I don't know that it's there yet, and we're certainly not ready to vote on it, even if it is. Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter at Murph's Turf joins me. Sir, thank you very much.

You look good on TV. Thank you. So let's just start broad brush. Where are we with this? How close are we to seeing some bill in the State House? They say we're close, but I will caution that they said we were close two weeks ago, and they said we were close last week, and they said that we were close earlier this week, and we still have not seen a bill.

I don't think that's cause for any great alarm. I think there's still going to be a sports gambling bill, but these things sometimes can take time to get going. All right, so I'm trying to get the all the names of all the people that we've already- Jason Sain, the representative from Lincolnton, said that he thinks it will resemble last year's bill. Now, which version of last year's bill, because ultimately we got to the end, and to try to appease some people, they took wagering on college sports out as that was somehow going to make it more pure. Is that where we're headed here too? No, I mean that happened as an amendment on the House floor.

That was certainly a hostile amendment, not something that the bill sponsors wanted. College sports gambling will be back in there. My best intelligence says that there will be 12 licenses untethered to professional sports teams, so the Hurricanes will not get theirs and then be able to go negotiate with FanDuel or DraftKings. FanDuel or DraftKings will be able to go get their own.

That's my latest intelligence, but you're right. By the end, there were two competing bills. There were different tax rates, different license fees, all that stuff. They're going to try to clean all that up and put out one bill, but it will include gambling on college athletics.

So she claimed, Pricey Harrison, who's from Guilford County, claims she's not anti-sports wagering. And honestly, she raised some issues about being predatory, which honestly, it's a business. Then I guess all businesses are predatory would be my statement. Their goal would be to have healthy customers.

Healthy customers are your best customers. That's just the way I look at it. For instance, I don't believe the ice cream shop wants everybody to become obese and die. I don't think they do. Maybe they do.

Maybe they don't care. But my overarching point here is it did seem like her complaints about the revenue. New Jersey made $11 billion last year in 2022.

I just read the story. They saw $11 billion in tax revenue come from this. Or maybe it was an $11 billion industry and they brought whatever the 20% was from the state of New Jersey over to tax revenue. I mean, I don't understand her figures, but what are her large complaints? Yeah, I mean, you know, Representative Harrison is like a lot of people over there, obviously got voted down last year. They have just worries about this. To be fair to her, she wants to see in-person gambling, or she doesn't want to see. She's willing to vote for in-person gambling at PNC Arena or Bank of America Stadium to increase the number of places where you can bet on sports, but she doesn't want to go the full mobile outlet.

She thinks that's very addictive, and I don't think there's any doubt that she's probably correct in that. She also wants to see that you can't register for these accounts with a credit card. That you'd have to register with a debit card, prove you have the money, not be able to go into debt doing some of these things.

So some of the things are kind of smaller measures. Obviously, the business community, the sports gambling business community is opposed to a lot of those things, but she's not as against it as some other opponents in the State House who are like, no gambling ever. We need to repeal the lottery. We need to get rid of the tribal casinos.

There are certainly some members of the legislature who want to go that way as well. It used to be. Again, I follow gambling and we talk about it a lot, but I don't do it.

It's just sort of like I know all about beer, but I do very little drinking of it. I've tried to register, but you can't do it with a credit card tied to a bank. At least that's that was my experience the last time I tried to register for what would be an offshore account is that you had to do it with something that wasn't tied to a bank. So it's either a debit card or I even think you could have used to be able you could use a Discover card.

But if you're like a city or a Chase that you couldn't do that, is that the law is different today? The offshore accounts certainly, I don't know exactly how the offshore accounts work, but I do know that with FanDuel and DraftKings because they're American businesses. They operate within the banking system that you can use. I think I just used a regular credit card to get an account when I lived in Virginia on one of those. They just accept anything. Yeah, when you deal with the offshore accounts, I think there's a lot of fraud alerts, a lot of issues that come up that way. But with FanDuel and DraftKings, and I just use those two because they have the market share in the states where it is legal.

They accept any kind of regular payment that you could go buy anything online with at Amazon.com or wherever your favorite place to shop online. I got two more things about this and I want to ask you about something else. Brian Murphy, WRAL Sports investigative reporter here. I know the answer is a lot. How much does this mean to the Carolina Hurricanes? How much does this mean to the Carolina Panthers, to the Charlotte Hornets, the ability to do this in the state?

It means a ton. I mean, the Hurricanes have spent a lot of time working on this issue. I know that Don Waddell has been over at the legislature talking to lawmakers, has taken phone calls with them, has really pushed that this is a very important... And some of the lobbyists that talk about this use it from the pro sports perspective. They say, we need to give everything to our teams here in the state to let them be successful. You'll see all the renderings for revamped or remodeled PNC Arena include a sports book or a sports lounge.

It is very important. Once it becomes legal, I would imagine that the Hurricanes and the Panthers and the Hornets will all sign deals with some sort of sponsorship agreement with a FanDuelz or a DraftKing or a BetMGM. I imagine they'll have signage up in their arenas. I imagine the sports book will be, if it's not added very quickly to PNC Arena, will be eventually added to PNC Arena and that will be sponsored as well. I mean, they see it as an opportunity to make additional revenue, which matters in all leagues, but particularly in salary capped leagues.

Yes, and if I'm not mistaken, this will not be part... I don't think this will be part of shared revenue. I think this will be revenue that... And even if it is part of shared revenue, the Hurricanes need to contribute more to it. Tom Dundon told me a while ago, he wants to not be one of those teams that takes revenue out of the system.

He wants to be a team that doesn't need the handout from the National Hockey League. I'm not sure the Hurricanes are there right now anyway because they draw so well. Look, to me, the other part about this is that this is also an entertainment product and we should be allowed to be entertained in the state of North Carolina as our neighbors to the north are in Virginia or any other state that is near us that does this.

It's all about also a quality of life issue. We're also seeing Texas, Georgia, Vermont, Missouri are all debating the issue right now in their state legislatures. I just saw that Massachusetts will begin accepting online bets in March, I think March 13th. The way it was explained to me on the cap stuff is, you know, all these other states, all these other teams are allowed... are making this money. So it's increasing the cap and what the Hurricanes have to pay, but they're not increasing their revenue on that side. So the cap's going up, but they're not getting the revenue spike associated with it.

I don't know how accurate that depiction is, but clearly, you know, Massachusetts is about to have it. So the Boston Bruins are certainly going to make money off sports gambling one way or another. That is revenue that right now the Carolina Hurricanes do not have. Yeah, Ted Leonsis has had a sports book at... I don't know what their building is called with the Washington Capitals anymore, but they've had a sports book for a while.

Brian Murphy, one more thing before we let you go, and I appreciate your time. The Pac-12 is having a hard time getting a television contract for their members. And with the Big 12 just signed one, the ACC signed one a while ago, and it lasts forever. The SEC and the Big 10 are entering new deals. What can you tell us about where the Pac-12 is, and is there an impact on the ACC?

Yeah, I'm fascinated by this story. The Big 12 sort of got out ahead of the Pac-12 and signed their deal at about $31 million a year. The Pac-12 needs to beat that number, and they're finding it really difficult to beat that number. ESPN is pulling back. Fox isn't interested in how they're looking at the streaming services.

A report came out yesterday about Apple, which leads to all kinds of issues, like if you get your money but you don't get any exposure, is that worth it? And there's been persistent rumors that the ACC could do something with the Pac-12. I don't know if that's invite eight members of the Pac-12 or six members of the Pac-12 to join the ACC in some variety. I don't know if it's getting Pac-12 games on the ACC network, so you're suddenly getting carriage in Seattle and Phoenix and Las Vegas and San Francisco and Denver, Colorado, and suddenly bringing in a lot more money to ESPN. I don't exactly know, but one of the things I'm interested in is maybe it's good that the ACC is sitting out this time in the marketplace. If you're not the SEC and you're not the Big 10, there doesn't seem to be a huge market for college sports rights at the moment. So that long-term deal certainly is handcuffing the ACC in some ways, but given the troubles of the Pac-12, maybe it's a good thing for the ACC at this point. I don't know if it's good, because I think if the ACC was in the market right now as well as the Pac-12, I think the ACC would do a lot better for itself than it does currently. That would also mean the ACC's grant of rights would be up.

Well, yes. They are protected. There is that iron gate around the ACC that lawyers have looked at and gone, yeah, you're kind of there.

Clemson, Florida State, Miami, Notre Dame, you're kind of there. With one of the best savings rates in America, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions, even easier than choosing Slash to be in your band. Next up for lead guitar, you're in. Cool. Yep, even easier than that. And with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts, is it even a decision? That's banking reimagined.

What's in your wallet? I do think there is an opportunity here, especially with the RSNs potentially going away, right? That maybe there is a streamer, maybe there is a third party that can get involved with the ACC and the Pac-12 and creating some sort of an alliance. I don't know if it's a merger.

That would seem odd. We already have 14 teams, 15 in sports, not named football. To then add, and there are only going to be 10 Pac-12 teams after Southern Cal and UCLA leave unless the Pac-12 expands, which I don't know why those schools would go to the Pac-12 since it does seem very tenuous. I don't know what's going to happen, but I do think there's an opportunity here that's smarter people than me. You can handle it.

I can't, Brian Murphy. I've been trying to figure out how a merger or some kind of alliance would work, and it's kind of broken my brain a little bit, so we'll see what Jim Phillips can come up with. I would say that the ESPN wants, they would like that late window, that 1030 window on whether it's Saturday nights or Thursday nights. After the NFL game is over, they would love to put a Pac-10 college football game on, and if it just so happened that at 11 o'clock it was, I'll throw it out there, Georgia Tech at Stanford in some sort, and that game was on, well, they would certainly watch it on the West Coast, and they probably would watch at least half of it on the East Coast. And you could do a Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

You could get the late window on all three of those things. Friday, I've been saying this for a long time, Brian, Friday is the, that's where the ACC should go. They should have an ACC game every Friday night.

I've been saying this for a long time. It's the untapped, really the untapped night of college football, although the NFL will probably be there in a couple of years anyway. I was going to say the ACC owned that Thursday night until the NFL decided that, no, we're going to take that piece of real estate, too. The ACC and the SEC is to trade it off. And now, now college football, it's all Mac.

Brian Murphy at Murfsturf on Twitter, WRAL Sports Investigative Reporter, thank you. Talk to you very soon, my friend. All right, sounds good. Thanks, Adam. With one of the best savings rates in America, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Even easier than choosing Slash to be in your band. Next up for lead guitar. You're in. Cool.

Yep, even easier than that. And with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts, is it even a decision? That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See Capital One dot com slash bank for details. Capital One and A-member FDIC.