2024 was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel for D.C.’s beleaguered sports betting program. But, as the saying goes, sometimes that light is just a freight train.

This July marks the city’s first opportunity to wiggle free from the rushed, no-bid contract the District inked with private partners—primarily, the well-connected Greek company Intralot—to run a government-backed sports wagering system five years ago. Yet, despite a history of embarrassing public snafus, messy private spats with D.C. officials, and consistently underperforming revenue numbers, the top brass at the District’s lottery seems ready to offer Intralot a contract extension anyway.

Executives at the Office of Lottery and Gaming have now told the Council on two different occasions that they plan to keep the existing deal in place at least for the near future, taking advantage of a clause in the sports betting contract allowing the city to renew its deal with Intralot for up to five additional years past the 2024 expiration date. “The length of the extension is not clear yet,” Frank Suarez, the head of the lottery office, told the Council’s business and economic development committee Wednesday, Feb. 14, but it’s likely to be at least a year as officials evaluate whether to solicit bids from other companies hoping to run the city’s sports betting operation and then evaluate new potential partners. Lawmakers will ultimately need to sign off on any extension.

In the meantime, Suarez says the lottery is pursuing a temporary fix: The agency wants to work with Intralot to find another subcontractor to overhaul its sports betting app, known as GambetDC. Specifically, Suarez hopes to bring in an as-yet-unidentified “top performing, nationally recognized” sports betting company to run the app for the city instead and bump up revenues a bit. The idea is that this firm could help out Intralot as the lottery decides what to do next, bridging the gap as the District considers handing out a new contract instead. 

“This is the fastest thing we can do, whether the contract ends in July or not, so that we can make a change as soon as possible,” Suarez assured the same Council committee at a Jan. 18 hearing. 

At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, the committee’s chair, admitted in that hearing that he found that plan “incredulous” and Loose Lips can’t help but share his doubts. “Why not just bid it out?” he wondered. (Intralot spokespeople did not immediately return a request for comment.)

Suarez’s logic, as far as it goes, is that this change will ensure that the city can keep its sports betting operation moving in a better direction even as a lengthy procurement process plays out. It would likely take the city months to write a new request for proposals, collect responses, then pick a winner; at least, if the city opts to ditch the Intralot deal, this mysterious new subcontractor can help it make more money in the meantime.

But why on Earth did the lottery wait so long to start the process of getting some extra help if this was the plan? Gambet’s problems (ranging from technical malfunctions to a lack of favorable odds for bettors) have been clear for years now. And it’s going to take a while to bring this new partner on board, since nothing moves quickly in government procurement—despite announcing this plan publicly a month ago, the lottery still hasn’t inked a deal with its new subcontractor. 

The agency needed to go to the Department of Small and Local Business Development to secure a waiver from the city’s minority contracting requirements so it could hand a piece of the sports betting contract to a company with “multibillion-dollar proprietary gaming platform and technology solution that is unique in the global gaming industry,” per an application it filed with DSLBD on Feb. 7. Naturally, there’s a 10-day waiting period before these waivers can be granted. Once that elapses at the end of the week and the lottery can bring its new partner aboard, Suarez estimates it will “take at least a month or two” to get the new platform up and running. By the time all that happens, it will nearly be July, when the original contract was set to expire anyway.

Perhaps the better question is why the lottery instead hasn’t spent more time preparing to throw out this contract entirely and rebid it. Intralot has plainly not been up to snuff—the latest numbers the lottery provided to the Council show that the city’s gambling revenues dropped by nearly $1.5 million in the last fiscal year, despite persistent promises of improvements—and it’s never come anywhere close to meeting the rosy projections advanced by its backers five years ago. Why trust the company to improve, no matter who it hires to clean things up? 

And what, exactly, is the point of even paying Intralot anymore if it needs another partner to run the highly complex operation of separating sports bettors from their money? If a big private firm is just going to run things anyway, why not cut out the District as a middleman and open up the city’s market to the big national sportsbooks, as Virginia, Maryland, and many other states have done? Suarez has consistently pooh-poohed the idea when lawmakers have pitched it, arguing that the city would collect more revenue from running its own sports betting operation, but that looks like an increasingly tenuous position as tax collections from the program keep dropping.

It’s not like Intralot has been an especially good partner for the city, either. DSLBD has hounded it for several years now over concerns that the company is not living up to the terms of its deal with the city by failing to spend enough money with the local businesses serving as its subcontractors. Intralot has, in turn, blamed its main subcontractor (the small, politically connected Veterans Services Corporation) for failing to do the work it’s promised, and tried to kick it out of the deal. The city has threatened repeatedly to pursue fines or other penalties against Intralot if it can’t settle this dispute somehow. (An attorney for VSC’s top executive, political insider Emmanuel Bailey, didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Suarez told McDuffie’s committee Wednesday that Intralot has “worked much more closely with DSLBD” to meet its small business spending requirements in recent months, but the numbers suggest there’s still reason for concern. As of last October, Intralot has spent roughly $25.7 million with its small business partners, per figures provided to the Council. The company has pledged to spend a total of $119.5 million with these firms by the time the deal concludes in July, leaving it just 22 percent of the way to that goal. VSC accounts for most of that deficit; Intralot reports being just 19 percent of the way toward its targeted $109.6 million in spending with the firm. And documents obtained by LL via a public records request show that Intralot and DSLBD were still trading barbs over this issue as recently as late last summer.

“I can’t say they’re going to meet their goals, but I believe they’re on track,” acting DSLBD director Rosemary Suggs–Evans told McDuffie Wednesday when he asked about Intralot’s progress in this regard. LL wishes he shared her optimism. 

Maybe someday the city won’t be stuck in such a shambolic situation when it comes to sports betting. Suarez did express some openness, at least, to rebidding this contract at some point, even if it takes a while (and some focused attention from the Council or Mayor Muriel Bowser could probably force a change here even sooner).

But the longer the city keeps trying to preserve the status quo with Intralot and company, the farther away any real change looks. LL can easily imagine a scenario where the lottery marginally improves revenues and keeps extending its deal with its existing partners, particularly if politicians remain content to ignore this issue.

It might be painful for city leaders to admit they made a mistake here, but at some point the Band-Aid needs to come off. How much more money will the city leave on the table in the meantime?