Virginia Is Not for Bettors, State Lawmaker Contends With Gaming Statute

Last year, sound online sports betting commenced inward Virginia. Some mobile sportsbooks make been warm to steal the commonwealth’s famed tagline – “Virginia is for Lovers” – for their marketing materials. But province lawmakers say the iconic motto should not follow used in such villainous ways.

State Sen. Tommy Norment (R-James City), first elected to the VA General Assembly inwards 1992, is ane of Virginia’s longest-serving lawmakers. The 75-year-old voted inward favor of the 2020 bill that authorised sports betting inwards the commonwealth.

However, Norment’s financial backing of legal sports play ends with sportsbooks using a somewhat neutered edition of the “Virginia is for Lovers” tagline. Licensed sportsbooks in the state, including DraftKings and Barstool Sportsbook, feature advertised that “Virginia is for Bettors.”

Norment says after latterly audience such an advertisement patch driving inward his car, he decided to innovate statute law that prohibits sportsbooks from including the line, “Virginia is for Bettors.”

The lawmaking rapidly gained favour inward the assembly’s upper chamber. Norment’s Senate Bill 96 passed the Senate unanimously, 40-0, earliest this week.

Leave Motto Alone

While perhaps non as iconic as “What Happens Here, Stays Here” that has long marketed Las Vegas, Virginia’s tourism and travelling slogan in 2012 was deemed by Advertising Age as “one of the to the highest degree iconic ad campaigns inward the past 50 years.”

Frankly, it irritated me,” Norment said of auditory modality “Virginia is for Bettors” on the radio. “We’ve spent a lifetime trying to market place ‘Virginia is for Lovers.’ i just matte it was trespassing.”

Norment’s bill, if passed past the House and signed past Governor John Glenn Youngkin (R), would prohibit sportsbooks or any other gaming business from using “Virginia is for Bettors” inward commercial-grade marketing. Violators would follow guinea pig to a $50,000 fine.

Norment revealed that an before variant of the account that would hold outlawed sportsbooks and casinos from fifty-fifty using “Virginia” inwards advertisements met a exacting response from the gaming industry. His re-worked legislation to only bound the modified state shibboleth was amend embraced.

No sportsbook or gaming steady presented oppositeness to SB96 during the bill’s hearings inwards the General Laws and Technology Committee.

Motto Backstory

“Virginia is for Lovers” was developed by II marketing wizzes dorsum inwards 1968. Advertising executives Jacques Louis David Steve Martin and George I Woltz, who would later strain The Steve Martin Agency, a creative publicizing steadfastly that is noneffervescent in surgery today, are credited with coming upwardly with the historic adage.

The pilot concept specified what sort of lovers Old Dominion was for, depending on the body politic touristry magnet beingness advertised. “Virginia is for Beach Lovers,” “Virginia is for Mountain Lovers,” and “Virginia is for History Lovers” were a few of the lines used.

State touristry officials later dropped the qualifier, and “Virginia is for Lovers” was to the full embraced.

Martin and Woltz feature long denied that they came upwardly with their “lovers” motto after VA legalized interracial matrimony through a 1967 lawcourt ruling.

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