Officials fight bill allowing rodeo gambling

Monday, Feb. 10, 2003 | 11:24 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

A bill that would allow pari-mutuel betting on Wyoming rodeo events has drawn opposition from the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

Wyoming House Bill 92 cleared the House in late January and now awaits a hearing before the Senate Agriculture, Public Lands and Water Resources Committee.

Current law only allows regulated wagering on horse, chariot, cutter, harness and chuckwagon racing and professional roping events, along with dog races held outside Wyoming.

"I'm not sure to what degree they could affect college rodeo, but if it's wagering on college rodeo, we're against it," NIRA commissioner John Smith said.

PRCA commissioner Steven Hatchell sent a letter to all 30 state senators urging them to defeat the proposal.

"The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association has a long history of opposition to gambling involving the sport of rodeo," he said. "By way of example, the PRCA's own bylaws, which govern the sport, specifically state that the PRCA opposes any organized gambling in connection with PRCA-approved rodeos."

Hatchell said gambling on sports "creates the potential to undermine the integrity of competition and also injects an often-unseemly element into sports."

The PRCA's opposition to gambling on its sport hasn't stopped the MGM Grand hotel-casino sports book in Las Vegas from putting up numbers on an event it plays host to, the PRCA Summer Finals Rodeo.

Scott Ghertner, director of sports and promotions at the MGM Grand, said the sports book only takes wagers on that event because the hotel is the host. It doesn't take bets on the association's premiere event, the National Finals Rodeo, which is staged in Las Vegas at the Thomas & Mack Center every December, nor on any collegiate rodeo events.

Ghertner said bets taken on rodeo events are similar to those accepted on golf tournaments, with odds set on a field of participants over the duration of the event.

Jay Kornegay, director of the race and sports book at the Imperial Palace hotel-casino in Las Vegas, which has earned a reputation for taking proposition bets on a number of sports, said his operation used to take wagers on the National Finals Rodeo, but not any more.

Kornegay said several years ago, Las Vegas Events, organizers of the championship NFR event, asked that the book discontinue taking bets on the event. Kornegay said the casino complied, but that the event never got much action anyway and it was placed on the board as a novelty to generate interest. He added that the Imperial Palace does not take bets on other rodeo events, including at the collegiate level.

"We didn't want to generate any controversy for an organization bringing events in (to Las Vegas)," said Kornegay, a former resident of Cheyenne who is familiar with Wyoming's rodeo events.

A spokesman for the Gold Coast hotel-casino in Las Vegas, a popular hangout for participants and fans of NFR, said the sports book doesn't accept wagers on that rodeo.

David Robertson of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling said the NIRA's Smith told him the organization would consider pulling the College National Finals Rodeo out of Wyoming if the bill passed.

"I wouldn't want to speculate what effect it could have on it, but it's definitely not going to be conducive to it," Smith said.

Rep. Ed Prosser, R-Cheyenne, the bill's primary sponsor, said opposition from the college and professional rodeo associations was not good enough reason to kill the bill.

"All this does, we just changed one word," he said. "We changed roping to rodeo. That would provide the opportunity to involve some other events."

Prosser said the bill would not affect PRCA rodeos, but is instead geared toward smaller rodeos around the state that wish to participate.

"There's nothing mandatory about this," he said. "It's optional for a rodeo if they wanted to go that way. They certainly don't have to do it. Nobody has to do it."