Mayor Brandon Johnson scored a rare City Council victory on Wednesday when his allies snuffed out an attempt to ban sweepstakes machines that compete with and take revenue away from video gambling terminals.
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) muscled the sweepstakes ban through the Council’s License Committee over the mayor’s objections and hoped to convince the full Council to do the same — even as Johnson continues to lobby behind the scenes to repeal the ordinance lifting the city’s ban on video gambling terminals.
But Beale came up with the legislative equivalent of snake eyes. The vote was 33-15 to defeat the ban and allow roughly 7,000 sweepstakes machines to continue operating.
Sweepstakes gambling machines look like video slot machines but have managed to operate in a gray area of the law by offering “free play” options and coupons to winners instead of cash.
Budget Committee Chair Jason Ervin (28th) — Beale’s political nemesis and the mayor’s most powerful City Council ally — argued that sweepstakes machines are “not illegal machines. They’re amusement devices.”
He convinced his colleagues that African American businesses frozen out when the state legalized marijuana would be harmed the most because they own the majority of sweepstakes machines.
“Who signs up to put their own communities in peril? … I took this job to do no harm. And this piece of legislation does harm,” Ervin said.
“Our folks are locked out of the VGT space, locked out of the cannabis space. In a legal sense, they have a method to participate and we want to take that away. Tell me what sense does that make? Did we sign up to come down here to take money out of the hands of Black folks? That makes no sense that we would sit back to take, literally by the stroke of a pen, money out of the community, out of the businesses in our respective communities.”
Beale was rankled by Ervin’s remarks.
“What’s the difference between turning a blind eye [on sweepstakes machine operators and] the drug boy on the corner selling weed and selling cocaine? They’re employing youth, too. Are we going to turn a blind eye to them because I know them? ‘I don’t want to hurt small businesses’? Come on, y’all,” Beale told his colleagues.
“This is a slam dunk for us to move forward to do what’s right to maximize the revenue from video gaming terminals that this body has approved, that we’re looking to get revenue from.”
Beale said there are “7,000 illegal sweepstakes machine that we know of” in Chicago, and that the cash-strapped city is not getting a dime from any of them because they are “not recognized” by the Illinois Gaming Board.
“There are some areas of the city that have 20 to 30 machines in a gas station. That’s a mini-casino operating illegally that we’re not getting a dime from,” Beale said.
The $16.6 billion, 2026 budget approved by a City Council majority lifted the Chicago ban on video gambling and assumed Chicago would generate $6.8 million by licensing newly legalized video gambling terminals across the city.
Johnson has raised strong objections to legalizing video gambling, in part because he believes it would violate the city’s host agreement with Bally’s, the gambling giant operating a temporary casino at Medinah Temple while building a permanent casino-entertainment complex in River West.
The mayor’s City Council allies have either banned or attempted to ban video gambling terminals in their individual wards while buying time for Johnson to find the votes to repeal the ordinance citywide. Wednesday’s action buys Johnson more time to round up those votes.
After the Council meeting, Johnson made the case for a “fair and open hearing to discuss all of the ramifications” of legalizing video gambling.
“There are some legitimate concerns — particularly around the amount of jobs that have been promised by the Bally’s casino,” he said. “I believe it’s imperative that this [Workforce Development] committee goes through a healthy debate so that we don’t … cause harm to the revenue that we are projecting to the casino, have a negative impact on the workforce, and that we make sure that we’re not in any way violating what the initial agreement called for.”
In a letter distributed to City Council members Wednesday, Bally’s reiterated its argument that video gambling would cost the city $74 million in annual revenue and up to 1,050 jobs at its temporary and permanent casinos. It would force the city to renegotiate critical elements of its host agreement, wipe out a yearly $4 million lump sum payment from Bally’s, and shrink the casino jackpot needed to save police and fire pension funds.