Members of the District of Columbia’s City Council legalized sports betting in 2018. The move was prompted, in no small part, by the eye-popping $90 million in new tax revenue council members were told sports betting would generate in the first four years. Two years after its launch, however, Washington, D.C., has collected just $4 million in total taxes related to sports gambling, less than what other states collect in sports betting tax revenue in a single month. But D.C.’s fumbled rollout of its sports betting market is not hard to explain.
The problem largely boils down to the fact that
