In a bet both sound and politic, Gov. Ned Lamont put down $50 on the home team around 9:45 a.m. Thursday at Mohegan Sun.
And legal sports betting was underway in Connecticut.
Minutes after placing the first such bet in state history, Lamont traveled to Foxwoods Resort Casino, where he placed $20 bets on the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and took another bow with Mashantucket Pequot tribal officials.
In both places, the governor said, “This has been a long time coming.”
Before James Gessner Jr., the Mohegan chairman, cut a ceremonial ribbon, Jeff Hamilton, Mohegan Sun’s president and general manager, provided Lamont with a brief tutorial on one of several self-service kiosks in the casino’s temporary FanDuel Sportsbook in the Bow & Arrow Sports Bar. After some remarks, Lamont placed a bet at a counter window manned by a teller.
“Fifty on the Sun,” he said as he turned from the window, signaling he’d bet on the Connecticut Sun, the Mohegan-owned WNBA team that was scheduled to play in nearby Mohegan Sun Arena in about 10 hours.
The Sun were a 71/2-point favorite to beat the Chicago Sky and even their best-of-five playoff series at a game apiece.
Asked what else he might bet on, Lamont said he’d been learning about “prop” bets, short for proposition, which can be made on individual performances, such as how many touchdown passes a quarterback might throw in a game — or in a half or a quarter.
“The prop bet I’d like to make is whether Tom Brady and Bill Belichick embrace at the end of their game,” Lamont quipped, referring to the former New England Patriots quarterback whose Tampa Bay Buccaneers take on the Belichick-coached Patriots this Sunday night in a much-anticipated National Football League tilt.
At Foxwoods, he…
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