ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) – Wednesday is the final day for sports fans to fill out their NCAA brackets ahead of the official kickoff to March Madness. Atlanta will play host to a handful of Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games next week, but with online sports betting seemingly going belly up in the legislature for another year, all they can do is watch.
Passage of a bill in the ongoing legislative session wouldn’t have become law in time for fans to bet on this year’s tournament anyway, but for many, frustration is growing with the consistent denial of legalized online sports gambling.
“You need to have regulations, but also you need to let people decide what they want to do,” said Otis Stansberry, an Atlanta resident.
Standberry, an avid sports fan, recently moved to Georgia from Nevada, a sports gambling hub and the first state to legalize the practice.
“It was really fun to bet and have a good time with some of the guys,” he said of his time there. “That’s the only thing that’s missing here in Atlanta. So they definitely need to legalize gambling.”
Stansberry finds it strange that Atlanta hosts some of the world’s premier sporting events, but doesn’t allow spectators and locals to bet on them. Aside from next week’s NCAA tournament games, Atlanta will host a slew of World Cup soccer matches in 2026 and the NFL Super Bowl in 2028, an event they’ve hosted before.
But online sports betting has become a flashpoint issue for many at the State Capitol. For the last four years, lawmakers have tried and failed to convince enough of their colleagues to push for legalization. They even gave it another shot this year with House Bill 450, but the bill flatlined nearly as soon as it was introduced.
Lawmakers in support want to throw a portion of the state’s proceeds from legalized online sports betting towards pre-k education and responsible gambling programs. Gambling addiction and questions of morality have been the main source of opposition.
“There’s no way you can sanctify moral manure, and that’s what gambling is,” Mike Griffin with the Georgia Baptist Mission Board said at the Capitol the day HB 450 was introduced. “Do we want to make money the ultimate standard for what we do and not do here in the legislature?”
Thirty-eight states and Washington D.C. have legalized online sports betting. In recent years, it’s become a perennial billion-dollar industry.
Tom Smith, an economics professor with Emory University, said he can understand why there are morality questions in the debate over it.
“It has the potential to have negative impacts on the most vulnerable people in a community,” he said. “Do you want to put that temptation in front of these people and say yeah, you can engage in sports betting. I think that’s where some of the moral outrage comes in.”
Smith also doesn’t think the impacts on live sporting events would be that much different if Georgia were to legalize online sporting betting. He also said it’s unlikely to influence the high profile events the city gets whether or not lawmakers can achieve legalization.
“The fact that you can’t do sports betting here isn’t going to detract from people going to the Super Bowl in a couple years, or going to a Braves World Series game or what have you,” Smith said.
Just because this year’s sports betting bill didn’t get the attention others in the past have, it’s not over. Lawmakers can still attempt to attach the legislation to a bill with more potential success, as they did in 2023. Lawmakers then tried attaching a seemingly doomed online sports betting bill to another bill that recognized the Lyons Soap Box Derby as the state’s official soap box derby event.
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