Delaware instituted its lottery in 1975. Because the state was very small and also surrounded by other jurisdictions with very active lotteries — Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland – state leaders sought a mechanism to win play from neighboring states. They decided to let players try to pick the winners of professional football games. Rather than incur the expense of professional consultants to advise them on appropriate point spreads for the games, they tried to develop that expertise in-house. It was the bureaucrats against the wise guys for Philadelphia and “Jersey”. The “big guys” (professional gamblers) also bet actively with the illegal bookies who used the “Las Vegas” line, that is, the line set by Las Vegas casinos (see Glossary). With a few quick phone calls, the true experts could discover which Delaware lines were faulty. The players continuously beat the game, and the state abandoned it before it could put the entire state budget into a deficit. Nonetheless, in 1992, when Congress passed the bill banning sports betting across the United States, Delaware was one of the four states that was given an exemption. There has been no cry from the Blue Hen State to give it another go. The state continues to operate other lottery games, including instant tickets, numbers, and Powerball lotto games.
Delaware has one thoroughbred racetrack and two harness tracks. The state authorized all types of slot machines and other gaming machines for its racetracks in 1995. Delaware Park offered the machines first, but Harrington Raceway and Midway soon followed them, and GTech won a contract to furnish the machines. Delaware Park pursued a strategy somewhat different from that of other states, as it sought to make a strong separation between the machine gaming and the track wagering. Track efforts to bring slot players to the track windows were simply unsuccessful. A track manager commented that people got too confused and that clearly Delaware had a dedicated group of slot players who had no interest in racing. An unused 60,000-square-foot section of the grandstand was converted to slots. No racing monitors were placed in the room, and players had to go to another room to make racing wagers.
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