Danville, VA just opened up a temporary facility today for gambling.

Let me wish happy anniversary yesterday, five-year anniversary, to the day that PAPSA, which is the law that essentially outlawed sports wagering everywhere in the United States, single-game sports wagering everywhere in the United States, other than the state of Nevada, it went away five years ago yesterday, and Caesars is opening up a sports book and casino in Danville, Virginia, which is not that far.

Our friend Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter, with more on that. Are you going up? Are you gonna play some bets and play some table games?

I will not today, but maybe sometime soon. Yeah, that opened at 9 30 this morning. Oh my god. They're in a temporary facility, but by 2024 they'll have a permanent facility in Danville, Virginia. So, okay, what is the tent? Is this a trailer? Are they in an old diner?

What exactly is this? Well, that's what it is down at the Catawba casino. It's trailers put together to make it feel like it's not a trailer. I think there's a big temporary tent. Oh, a tent?

Very nice. Where's the vault if we're in a tent? This is like a bake sale.

So desperate to gamble that they're willing to go to a temporary facility and get it and get it on. And this has ramifications in North Carolina. Right. We may see those ramifications as soon as three hours from now when the North Carolina Senate unveils their budget plan.

I expect, at least that's what I've been told, that it will have casino gambling in that budget. So, do we know if this is a direct reaction? Because Danville is not that far from the North Carolina line. It's probably when you get up to the northern border, Danville is what, 25, 30 minutes north of the North Carolina-Virginia border? Yeah. I mean, they expect 60% of their customers to come from North Carolina.

That's the Triad and the Triangle. I don't know if it's in direct response, but it certainly has gotten the attention of North Carolina Republican leaders, many of whom represent some of those border counties, including Phil Berger, the leader of the Senate represents Rockingham County, which is a border county with Danville. And so, I don't know if it's a direct correlation, but it's not the only casino going up on North Carolina's borders. There are four now in Virginia all along the border. So, I do see this as a response to what's happening in Virginia. Are we talking about like near the eastern part of the state, like north of Jacksonville? Or are we going out west, where Boone is very close to the Tennessee and Virginia borders? There was a study done.

I have not seen the budget proposal yet. But there was a study done, in my sense, that they're going to put it in areas that could use an economic boost. I think the survey looked at Rockingham County, so you'd have dueling casinos on the border. They looked at Rocky Mount, and then perhaps one in Nash County in Rocky Mount, and then perhaps one in the northeast corner of the state, and possibly the southeast corner of the state.

So, not New Hanover, but somewhere inland a little. Now, I was thinking about where's Virginia putting those others, because if Virginia, like, so North Carolina would have to respond in some ways. So, how far along are we? Do we know anything about what the state budget might look like to get this passed and then put it on the desk of the governor? Well, the House has passed their budget already.

The House budget is passed. Does that budget include casinos? It does not.

It does not. But the Senate is about to unveil their budget, and usually the House and the Senate will then have to come together. They're both run by Republicans, so usually they negotiate together to kind of come up with a final budget. But I do expect when the Senate budget comes out that there may be legalizing casinos on non-tribal land and or video lottery terminals that could go into bars and casinos.

I mean, I'm sorry, bars and restaurants across the state as well. All right, sports books and casinos are not always the same thing, so do we know how they'll be separated or conjoined, if you will, within the budget? My understanding, and again, I've been talking to people down at the state legislature all morning, is that sports wagering, the bill which passed the House of Representatives, will be a standalone bill. It will be outside of the budget process, and so they will try to pass that in the Senate. You'll remember, and listeners may, that the Senate already passed a sports wagering bill in 2021.

Right. That's the bill that ended up failing in the House in 2022. Now that it's a new legislative session, they have to get it passed through both the House and the Senate again. All right, so the sports wagering, so this is probably, I mean, there will be some sports books, but so this will be outside of the budget, which you and I talked about last week, having that entire thing within the budget. So will it be a standalone bill for sports wagering? My understanding is the mobile sports wagering bill that passed the House of Representatives will be taken up separate from the budget.

It will not be included in the budget. That's according to people I've talked to today at the state legislature. Mind you that, you know, nothing's been released, and these things can change, but my understanding is that sports gambling will stand alone. The mobile sports gambling will stand alone.

All right, look, Brian Murphy from WRAL, WRAL sports investigative reporter was with us here on the Adam Gold show at Murph's turf on Twitter. Tom Dundon, David Tepper as owners of major professional franchises here in the state. Also Michael Jordan, who is, I think for the time being, still the owner of the of the Charlotte Hornets. They would all like to operate a sports book within their buildings. So how does that differ from, is that part of the casino part, or is that also part of the mobile gambling? That's a great question, and one I don't have an answer to at the moment, but under the way the current sports wagering bill is, they wouldn't really have sports books. I mean, we're calling them sports books. They'd be more like sports lounges, where you'd have to place a bet through a kiosk or something like that. If they then turn around and open up sports books, the traditional sports book where you can bring in cash and gamble on sports at multiple locations around the state, it'll be very interesting what the sports owners would then say. They say, well, wait a second, we already have sports books, so why can't we run a traditional sports book at our facility?

Yeah, now I don't even know, and you might not know either, so we'll close on this. Basically, if we're just talking about kiosks, my guess is there would be a company to run the kiosks, and the Hurricanes or the Hornets, I almost said Bobcats, or the Panthers would simply get maybe a percentage of the overall handled, right? Yeah, my understanding is they would be partnerships. As soon as this bill passes, you're going to see partnerships between the sports teams and whatever sports books they decide to partner with.

Is that just advertising? Do they come in and run the book? How does the professional team, we'll use the Hurricanes, how do they get compensated? They get compensated a total of the handle. Do they get some set dollar amount? Those all need to be negotiated.

When I talked to Don Waddell about this, he said, a lot of it depends on what's in the final bill that passes, how we're allowed to operate. And of course, you get triple your money if you win a Stanley Cup, right? I imagine that would make them more valuable if they were to win that. Not to mention, they're also asking for money. PNC is asking for money from the city and the county to do improvements at PNC and certainly winning a Stanley Cup probably helps open up some wallets on that end as well.

Yes, their cup could runneth over. I'll get out of here right now. We've already heard Victoria on that.

Brian Murphy at Murfsturf on Twitter, WRAL sports investigative reporter. I'll probably talk to you again this week is my guess. That sounds good.

Three o'clock that Senate budget comes out. All right, man, we'll take a look at it. Thank you very much, sir. All right, thank you.