Nebraska's first racetrack casino is poised to open later this month in Lincoln.
The temporary WarHorse Casino set up in the horse racing simulcast building at Lincoln Race Course will have 433 slot machines. It won't have table games, though, as officials say there isn't enough room.
Another thing it won't have is sports betting.
The gambling ballot measures that gained overwhelming support from Nebraska voters in November 2020 not only authorized casinos in the state, they also opened the door to betting on sporting events.
And when the Legislature in spring 2021 established the framework for casino gambling in the state, the law included provisions for sports betting.
But while rules for casino gaming were finalized earlier this year, the rule-making process for sports betting hasn't even begun.
Tom Sage, director of the Nebraska Racing and Gaming Commission, said sports betting will go through a separate rule-making process before the commission, just like casino gaming did.
That means a public hearing and commission vote, followed by a review by the state Attorney General's office and approval by the governor's office.
Sage said proposed rules for sports betting have been created and the industry was allowed to analyze them and make comments and suggestions. Those comments have been addressed, and the rules are tentatively scheduled to go before the Racing and Gaming Commission for a public hearing Oct. 21.
It took about five months for casino rules to be approved by the governor after the Racing and Gaming Commission voted on them in December, so if the process takes the same amount of time, that would mean sports betting rules could be in place by March or April of next year.
Sage declined to speculate on whether the timeline for approval will be the same, shorter or longer than it was for casino gambling.
The timeline means that at best, sports wagering will be available in Nebraska about 2 1/2 years after voters approved it.
Contrast that to Kansas, where sports betting began Thursday, just a few months after the state legislature approved it.
But Kansas had a couple of advantages over Nebraska. One, it already has casinos, so it didn't have to create new rules for gambling. Two, the Kansas law allows mobile sports betting.
The Nebraska Legislature chose to require that all sports betting occur in person at Nebraska casinos, which Sage said is "the biggest reason" that it's taken so long for sports betting to get going in Nebraska.
Because all betting must occur in person in a casino, there was no reason to craft rules for sports betting until there were casinos in the state, he said.
"We could have had sports wagering rules (already), but we would have had no place to have sports wagering," Sage said.
Whenever the rules for sports betting are approved, WarHorse will be ready to take bets.
"The moment that sports betting is approved in the state of Nebraska, we will offer it," said Lynne McNally, CEO of the Nebraska Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, which is partnering to open the WarHorse Casinos in Lincoln and Omaha.
McNally said sports betting will be added to the temporary casino in Lincoln once it becomes available. A temporary casino is not scheduled to open in Omaha until late in 2023, so it will likely have sports betting from the start.
It's not clear yet what the plans are at Fonner Park, which hopes to have a temporary casino open in Grand Island by Thanksgiving.
Sharon Haselhoff, a regional vice president with Elite Casino Resorts, Fonner's partner in the casino, said the company operates sports books at casinos in Iowa and Colorado and plans on having one in Grand Island "in accordance with the rule-making by the commission."
"We are awaiting to see what the final rules will be for sports wagering," she said.
McNally said she appreciated Gov. Pete Ricketts' timely approval of the casino rules once they had been voted on by the commission and vetted by the attorney general.
"So I'm hoping the process goes as quickly for sports betting," she said.
Depending on the timing, it's likely it will be a new governor, either Republican Jim Pillen or Democrat Carol Blood, who makes that decision.
One thing that will need to be clarified through the rule-making process is what steps casinos will have to take to add sports betting once the rules are approved.
Sage said he believes it could be a simple process that involves an administrative approval by his office, or commission members could decide they want to approve each sports betting operation.
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Legal sports betting got underway Thursday in Kansas, including a location at the Hollywood Casino at Kansas Speedway. The temporary Barstool Sportsbook consists of 30 sports betting kiosks and five betting windows, with odds boards and 45 high-definition televisions. The casino plans on opening a permanent Barstool Sportsbook in the fall.