Online gambling petition on track to make Nebraska's ballot with multi-million dollar campaign

Nebraska could soon become the next state to legalize online sports betting.

The committee organizing petitions to legalize and regulate online sports betting, Tax Relief Nebraska, said it's on track to turn in enough signatures to make the November ballot.

At WarHorse Casino in Lincoln, customer Norm Moyer of Friend, Nebraska, said he supports the initiatives. If online sports wagering makes the ballot, he’ll vote yes.

“I think everybody should have the right to,” Moyer said.

Whether people can bet online should be up to the individual, he said. Fellow WarHorse patron Chad Harper, of Palmyra, said he signed the petition, “to keep the money here in Nebraska — to keep as much of it focused here and in our communities."

Harper added he would still come into the casino to wager if the measures pass.

Lots of Nebraskans already gamble online. Testimony in the Nebraska Legislature by a geo-fencing company showed that over the course of a year, people crossed the state’s border to bet on their phones 40,000 times in states where it’s legal — mostly Iowa.

But some in the target demographic of younger men are weary of sports betting.

“I'd probably say I'm against it, just because out of all my friends, the most annoying sports friends are the ones who bet on stuff,” soccer fan Jake Wolf said at Captain Jack’s sports bar in Lincoln. He’s interested in friendly wagers and how oddsmakers think a team should perform. But otherwise, sports betting “takes away from the game.”

“I guess I do technically bet. I do a fantasy football league where I throw like down $50 a season,” Wolf said. “But a lot of that chat is centered around betting, and it's really boring. Like, I'd rather talk about players. I'd rather talk about games, strategy, stuff like that.”

Different election, same promise

At least one anti-gambling advocate agrees that sports betting undermines competition. Pat Loontjer, executive director of Gambling with the Good Life, an organization that opposes gambling, said wagering is ruining college sports and straining people’s finances.

“It affects the really young men the most, and the heartache that this thing is going to cause young guys that are in college and saving money for their futures — it's all going to be wasted,” Loontjer said.

Her organization has campaigned against expanded gambling in Nebraska for 30 years. A recent case involving Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby getting caught for placing bets while he was at Indiana is just the tip of the iceberg, she said.

Sports integrity and personal finances aren’t her only concerns.

A court ruling and state law from more than a decade ago made it legal for canvassers to be paid by the signature and from out-of-state. That’s a concern, along with the fact DraftKings and FanDuel have donated about $3.5 million each — more than $7 million total — to the committee organizing the initiative called Tax Relief Nebraska.

“Certainly not done free will by citizens,” Loontjer said. “It's done by paid solicitors, and they get so much per signature.”

Property tax relief is one of the big draws for people signing the petition. Loontjer said the amount of promised relief is a “lie.”

“They passed the casinos (legalization) in 2020, and nobody's seen a cent of property tax relief. It doesn't happen,” Loontjer said.

That lingering promise is front-of-mind.

“You're standing there with a petition saying, ‘You want to sign for property tax relief?’ Everybody would sign it. Why wouldn't you sign it?” Loontjer said. “Unfortunately, they'll probably get their signatures, and they'll be on the ballot. And then, we'll be facing millions of dollars of advertising to promote it, saying that this is good for the state. It's going to be property tax relief again.”

Nebraska Family Alliance executive director Nate Grasz said in a recent news release that voters reported “materially false statements” by canvassers. One video recording showed a petitioner saying online wagering was already legal in Nebraska.

“To tell voters this is about tax relief, when the proposal is actually a major expansion of online gambling financed by out-of-state gambling companies — whose own estimates show less than a quarter of one percent in property tax relief — is a complete sham and raises serious questions about election integrity,” Grasz said.

The property tax relief fund would receive 70% of the online wagering taxes collected, which is the same allocation from in-person wagering taxes. Grasz said the amount of expected property tax relief from mobile betting — an estimated $61 million over five years — is marginal compared to the $25 billion five-year property tax burden statewide.

Nebraska Public Media News requested records from the Nebraska Secretary of State’s Office about petition complaints in early June. But after delaying the request twice, the office said it wouldn’t be able to complete the request until July 2, given the office’s workload and it being an "extensive" request.

‘Action 24/7’

Mike Sciandra with the Nebraska Council on Problem Gambling is officially neutral on the subject, but aims to ensure proper safeguards exist. The council provides gambling addiction education and advocates for the availability of problem gambling treatment.

“The big thing I'd like to mention is that mobile sports betting, in other states, has proven to be about three to four times more addictive and cause more problem gambling than traditional casino gambling,” Sciandra said.

“Any mobile sports book, there is action to be laid 24/7,” Sciandra said, “whether it's sports from other countries or whatever.”

His organization is preparing for mobile sports betting to make the November ballot and pass. Prediction market apps Kalshi and Polymarket offer “trading” on the outcome of a game or match — or seemingly anything else that could happen — in a similar way futures contracts for gold, oil and cattle markets work. Given those alternative options to mobile wager, he wants to be realistic and prepared.

“Let's be real. At the end of the day, this is 2026. Gambling is prevalent in all forms nationwide. And now especially with the prediction markets out there, there's availability to sports betting in a quasi-legal fashion in all 50 states,” Sciandra said.

Regardless of the petition, Sciandra said canvassing has gone from grassroots volunteering to a profitable gig.

“If you're not going to live here and actually be the ones who see the consequences of it, why are you the ones who are gathering those petitions?” Sciandra said.

He agrees with Loontjer and Nebraska Family Alliance, saying voters should receive accurate information before deciding whether to sign. He doesn’t want “pie in the sky” property tax relief numbers thrown out to potential signees without a note about the social costs.

Heading into the signature deadline, Sciandra sets the table for voters in Nebraska, as they rationalize whether this is something they want for the state.

“Is the juice worth the squeeze, as far as what we're getting from property tax relief and other relief and other funds coming into the state, versus the social costs that we're going to see from the activity?” Sciandra asked.

Nebraska could be missing out

Lynne McNally, director of government relations at WarHorse Casinos, said paid circulators are inevitable for a successful shot at making the ballot.

“It's just a fact anymore that you really can't do this with a volunteer effort,” McNally said. “It's very, very difficult.”

Several petition campaigns, including vocal property tax relief efforts like EPIC, have stalled due to not having enough money for a petition ground game.

Due to the challenges of running a volunteer-led petition, she said the state shouldn’t change its laws.

“If you're mandating volunteers, you do not want the petition process to be legal in the state of Nebraska,” McNally said.

The Nebraska Legislature, which didn’t pass an online betting law this session, could take a successful petition drive as a message.

“These are things that have been presented to the Legislature over and over and over, and they continually stand in the way,” McNally said.

As for sports integrity, she said WarHorse has asked Nebraska Athletics about what the casino can do to shore up the integrity of college sports, if the proposal passes. Additionally, McNally said WarHorse already enforces a self-exclusion list, where problem gamblers can proactively ban themselves from betting. That feature would be available online as well.

“If you've got a problem with sports betting, we do not want your business,” McNally said.

McNally argued Nebraska hasn’t received any tax benefits from the online sports betting that’s already occurring in the state.

“They're just betting illegally by using either a VPN to disguise their location or they're driving across state lines to place a bet as soon as they hit Iowa, and then they drive right back,” McNally said.

WarHorse operates casinos in Lincoln and Omaha with another planned for South Sioux City. The company is a subsidiary of Ho-Chunk Inc., the economic development arm of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. WarHorse is publicly supporting the online wagering petitions.

A portion of taxes collected would go to the county in which a person wagered from, so all 93 counties can get a piece of revenue from sports betting.

“That would just be an almost impossible logistical headache,” said Ryan Butler, a senior editor who reports on the gaming industry for Covers.

Butler said it would be challenging to calculate taxes when a person drives through multiple counties during one visit to a sports betting app.

He estimated online sports betting could generate about $10-20 million per year in total tax revenue for Nebraska. In Unicameral debate, supporters estimated about $32 million in yearly tax gains. In either case, “that's a rounding error, what the sports betting tax will do,” Butler said of the state’s more than $5 billion per year budget.

Lawmakers and industry professionals don’t have enough research on the impacts of mobile sports gambling on young men, Butler said. But generally in places where gambling is more accepted, like Nevada and New Jersey or countries like England and Ireland, “their society has not crumbled because of gambling.”

Something is better than nothing when it comes to online sports gambling taxes, McNally said. With the prevalence of VPNs and Nebraskans driving across the state’s border to bet, McNally argued sports betting issues already exist in the state.

“We already have those problems,” McNally said. “We're just not paying [the] Compulsive Gamblers Assistance Fund to help them with their problem.” Under the current tax laws for casino gambling, that fund receives 2.5% of taxes collected.

WarHorse is lining up a partnership with DraftKings and FanDuel, since they already have large databases. McNally equated the prowess of those national brands to that of Pepsi or Coca-Cola in the soda space.

“WarHorse is a Nebraska company. We do business in Nebraska. We choose a Nebraska company if it's an option,” McNally said. “In this case, it wasn't an option to go with a Nebraska company, so we affiliated with the very large companies that are out there now.”

The measures would require sportsbooks to place a server somewhere in Nebraska.

“This is not going to be a data-center-sized server,” McNally said. “That's not what we're talking about. This is going to be in a single room.”

McNally said the committee Tax Relief Nebraska is well on track to send in enough signatures to the Secretary of State’s office. They need about 88,000 for one petition that creates an online gambling law, and then 126,000 to put it in Nebraska’s Constitution.

The Nebraska Secretary of State’s Office certifies the ballot in mid-September. By then, it will be known if the petitions collected enough valid signatures to be put before voters in the November election. The committee is required to send in signatures by July 3. But with the Fourth of July falling on a weekend, the Secretary of State’s Office is closed that day, making the deadline July 2. If certified, the measures will hit November ballots across the state.

Free and confidential problem gambling treatment is available by calling 833-BET-OVER for the Nebraska Problem Gambling helpline.