UNLV Law Students Lead Way for Pari-Mutuel Wagering

Students attending the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Las Vegas drafted legislative language for the Nevada Senate to allow for pari-mutuel wagering on poker tournaments, eSports or any other event not classified as a horse race, dog race or sporting event. 

Senate Bill 240 looks to include ways to include pari-mutuel wagering – where the house fee or “vig” is removed and payoff odds are calculated by sharing the pool among all wining bets. Currently, Nevada only has a carveout for horseracing and daily fantasy sports.

Nevada’s Gaming Commission has a statute for wagering using the pari-mutuel wagering for any event held on a track. A separate statute defines a betting pool as taking wagers on the outcomes by any system or method.

The UNLV website spoke to students involved in the measure. “The main reason for our bill is that it’s very hard to set lines for events such as eSports and the WSOP,” said Kathleen Gallagher, a second-year law student. “Handicapping the odds will keep casinos form suffering large losses.”

Mark Starr, a third-year law student, said, “We are clarifying the law. We are submitting a definition to use to approved these events. Gaming is the life blood of our city; we are adapting the regulations to make (pari-mutuel gaming) on other events possible.”

The Nevada State Senate opened gaming statutes drafted by law students at UNLV since 2001 – an advantage to gaming law students not found anywhere in the country. Recent enrollee P. Nelson Lambert said, “We are pretty lucky we fall on this term. The legislature only meets every other year for 120 days.”

The Rio has experimented with WSOP final table betting in previous years but it failed to garner any significant interest from the poker community.