The NC Gambling Bill has FINALLY been signed!

Alright, so you were there at Spectrum Center, right, in Charlotte as the governor signs the bill. Give me the lay of the land and your thoughts.

Yeah, I'm here still at Spectrum Center in Charlotte. This is a long time coming as you just sort of laid out. They've been working on this bill in North Carolina for about four years, kind of behind the scenes, and then obviously we saw last year when it failed by a single vote. That got mentioned many times today. What I was struck by is just how sort of quickly it moved this year and how, I know it didn't feel quick, but like, you know, sort of the culmination of it all. You know, once they got the momentum going, the fact that it's now going to be legal in six months to 12 months is pretty amazing.

I mean, it was kind of embarrassing that it didn't pass last year based, I mean, only based on the comments from those people who voted against it. It was as though they were stuck in a, you know, in a time where they stepped into the DeLorean. They had, you know, activated the flux capacitor. We went back 40 years. Like, it's been going on. Gambling on sports has been going on illegally. Everywhere that didn't have it legal for, I mean, is probably 100 years.

So this was something that had to happen. So let me boil down to the, I know it was in Charlotte for a reason, because Spectrum Center figures to be one of the, we'll just call it a brick and mortar place where you can wager Sports Lounge, PNC Arena figures to be the other. What are the rules for that? Yeah, so there are eight venues across the state that can hold these in-person sports books. Of course, you mentioned the Spectrum Center, PNC, Wake Med Soccer Park in Cary, two NASCAR tracks, two golf courses, and Bank of America Stadium. And that's what I've spent a lot of my time, sort of in the last week, kind of talking to these facilities about how quickly are you going to roll out a sponsor?

How quickly are you going to start putting aside space? You know, PNC Arena doesn't really have room for a sports book. We talked to Nigel Wheeler.

He's the general counsel of the Hurricanes. He said, we want to put in a world-class sports book that has great restaurant, great bar, great venue to place your wagers. That's going to take some time, right? PNC Arena is not really equipped for that at the moment. You know, we'll see how quickly these, they start partnering up with, with mobile operators. They still need to wait for the Lottery Commission to probably put in some more rules about exactly what they can and cannot do. So that's where I've sort of turned my focus.

I think those eight spots are going to be really interesting. Who do the Hurricanes partner with? Who do the Hornets partner with?

And then how quickly can they get a space, like a good space, not, not a temporary space, but how quickly can they get a real nice space that people want to go to up and running? Yeah, Wake Med will have the same, just keeping it local to me, Wake Med will have the same type of issues in terms of where there's basically a lot of like outdoor space at Wake Med, not a lot of indoor space at Wake Med Soccer Park. Let me ask you about golf courses. You mentioned the two, I'm going to guess, because I don't know, maybe I should, one of them is Pinehurst, yes? Well, the two are Quail Hollow and Sedgefield, the two that host annual events.

Annual PGA Tour events, those are... Right now, if the US Open comes to Pinehurst next year, they'll be able to have a temporary facility out there, but it won't be able to be like a permanent brick and mortar place. But during the tournament, they'll be able to have a thing, have a facility. Now, the important thing with Wake Med and all these places, it doesn't have to be at their facility. It can be up to a half a mile away from their facility. And so I think what you might see at Wake Med is, can they build a facility on their grounds, but not, maybe it has easier access from that road or from the highway than getting all the way into Wake Med. Or maybe it's back in Fenton, which is very close, a very simple walk.

Just saying. Could be that's another reason to go over there. So that would be one good thing for Wake Med, for the golf tournaments. So I'm just curious, they're only used for five days a year, four days a year, both Sedgefield and Quail Hollow. So are those going to be operating year round? I think it's up to, it'll be up to the facilities. But you know, at the PPC Scottsdale where the waste management is, the PGA tour is building a sports book there, a permanent sports book. And it should be open pretty soon. It's in between their championship course and their other course. And so you could see, you know, I mean, obviously they're only in use five days for the big tour, but they are in use by other people and maybe you can turn them into another place where you can make money. I mean, this is what it's all about, right? Activating these, that's the term that the hurricanes always use.

Activation of these arenas and of these facilities on more than just game days. All right. Final thing for Brian Murphy before we have to say goodbye. I just want to reiterate to people, it's not like you can go download an app today and start wagering, right? We have to, it's no earlier, what was it then? January 8th. So that will be maybe the first day that you possibly could place a bet on your phone in North Carolina. Yep.

Yeah. Important to note, January 8th is the first date that it could start. The lottery commission has until since the bill was signed today, one year from today to June 14th. So there's a six month window in which they can launch and they've told me and others that they're going to launch everybody at the same time.

Nobody's going to get to the head of the line. So they'll have to get all 12 licenses issued and ready to go. I talked to several people down here and they said they're pushing for January. They're pushing really hard for January, but as the governor said, it's a mammoth job for the lottery commission. Whether you believe that or not is up to you, but so somewhere between January and June. So even though it's legal right now, cannot place your bet. Yeah.

You cannot, you cannot do it just yet. And again, the hurricanes do plan on being one of them. We're going to talk to Tom Dundon here in just a few minutes. National championship game in college football is January 8th. About what do we have about two months later, you've got the start of March Madness, right? Those are big, big gambling days, gambling stretches. The college national championship college, the college basketball tournament, the Masters in April, all of these things that people might be enticed to, to drop $2 on the Super Bowl is right in between all that. That's right.

This I totally forgot about American football there. Don't you know? Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter at Murph's turf. Thank you very much for checking in. I appreciate it. All right. Thanks, Adam. You got it.