Sandwiched between a Grocery Outlet and Interstate 5 in Oceanside, California, and with a peekaboo view of the Pacific Ocean, Ocean’s 11 Casino is relatively full at lunchtime on a September Wednesday.
A card tournament is going on in the poker room, while on the main floor, players are trying their hands at several kinds of poker, blackjack, and EZ baccarat. Baseball games play on monitors around the room.
Not all of the 50 tables are in play, and while there is a low buzz in the space, it’s nothing like the glitzy lights and sounds of a Las Vegas casino. Ocean’s 11, one of about 70 card rooms in California, has a bar and lounge where customers can get away from the action in a quiet space.
As owner Haig Kelegian takes all of this in, his face registers some concern. The future of his business could be at stake, he says, if Proposition 26 passes. That’s not because he’s worried that if California’s tribes can offer sports betting or roulette or craps, those games will cut into his business. What he’s worried about is a legal provision in the initiative that would allow private citizens to sue card rooms, a major departure from how the process now works.
If that happens, he said, there could be enough of them that even if the lawsuits are dismissed, he and his fellow card room owners could go bankrupt trying to defend themselves. And if a judge were to rule against the card rooms in even one lawsuit, it would drastically change the way they operate and potentially put some out of business.
Tribal casinos can have sports betting
Proposition 26 is one of two legal sports betting initiatives on California’s November ballot. The other is Proposition 27, backed by seven commercial sports companies, that would allow for statewide mobile wagering with platforms tied to tribal casinos. The state’s tribes have been lobbying hard against Proposition 27, fearing it will take control of gambling in California away from them.
The fight over sports betting in California has seen the most interest group spending on a state referendum in U.S. history, with those for and against Propositions 26 and 27 staking their campaigns with a total of $400 million. Spending has already surpassed $300 million.
Proposition 26, backed by the state’s tribes, would make it legal to offer in-person sports betting at tribal casinos and four horse racetracks. It would also allow for some additional ball and dice games, but according to Kelegian, he and his fellow card room owners are happy to let the tribal casinos have all that.
“The card room industry has never been against tribal gaming,” Kelegian told . “The industry has never come out and said anything negative about tribal gaming. [Tribes] do worry that if gaming became legal and they had spent hundreds of millions on their places on the outskirts, that the places in the city would take their business. But that isn’t going to happen.”
The main issue, he said, is the legal provision that would change how card rooms could be sued. The card rooms and tribes have different views on how the legal provision could or would be used.