6 January 4 - 10, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ban is worth $6.2 billion, Dallas Stars owner Tom Gaglardi $3.7 billion and the Texas Rangers’ recently christened championship boss Ray Davis $2.9 billion. Add it all up, and it’s a robust $27.3 billion, or … Less — by $6 billion, mind you — than the unfathomably deep pockets of Las Vegas ca- sino magnate Miriam Adelson. With son-in- law Patrick Dumont, Adelson heads the group that built The Venetian and The Palazzo on the Vegas strip. Last week, the NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved her acquisi- tion of the Mavericks for $3.5 billion. Adelson has the power to prompt Cuban to sell his beloved Mavs, but is her $33 bil- lion empire and considerable influence with Republican lawmakers in Texas enough to bring legalized gambling to the Lone Star State? If so, are the Mavs long for Dallas? Tom Landry and Don Carter are rolling over in their graves. But, by embracing the burgeoning, inevitable industries of gambling and sports betting in Texas, Cuban and Jones are about to be rolling in even more money. Landry (the iconic original coach of the Cowboys) and Carter (founding father of the Mavericks) were principled men with be- liefs in the Christian faith. Landry spent much of his offseason volunteering for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Carter went to church twice on Sunday and always removed his trademark Stetson indoors “be- cause Momma raised me right.” Doubt if they ever made even a friendly wager in their lives. These days the custodians of the Mavs and Cowboys are Cuban and Jones, charac- ters who know their way around a good party, wheeler-dealers who are adept at profiting from businesses that Landry and Carter wouldn’t have touched. If you travel outside Texas, you realize that casino gambling and sports betting have be- come commonplace. But here in the deep-red, Republican-controlled Bible Belt, putting money on “games of chance” is still a crime. As of now, 37 states have legalized gam- bling. In 2022, New Jersey took in a whop- ping $2.6 billion in net profit from sports betting, and in its first 10 weeks after allow- ing online gambling, New York raked in $4 billion in gross revenue. Even without legal avenues, estimates are that Texans bet $6 billion a year on sports. Despite that potential windfall, ultra- conservative gambling opponent Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced last May that on- line sports betting isn’t coming to Texas any time soon. Plano Rep. Jeff Leach au- thored a bill to legalize sports gambling, and the House considered “destination re- sort” casinos. Both ideas were summarily quashed in the state’s Republican-dominated Senate. “I’ve said repeatedly there is little to no support for expanding gaming,” Patrick said. “We don’t waste time on bills without over- whelming GOP support. Texas remains a red state.” Against that daunting backdrop, Cuban and Jones are betting on Texas. Jones is fiscally red; Cuban socially blue. Both covet, above all else, green. Do they need even more financial and po- litical oomph to twist Republican arms in Austin? Enter Adelson, who last year do- nated $1 million to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. In 2018, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump. Sure enough, she’s mega — MAGA — rich. As far away as gambling seems here, it’s also creeping oh so close. That’s why Cuban is selling a 70-percent chunk of the Mavs to casino owners and why Jones was an early investor in DraftKings sports betting com- pany and has long partnered with Oklaho- ma’s WinStar Casino and the Texas Lottery. Said Jones recently, “I do play the lottery … I’m a big fan of what it brings in for our state’s education.” In a separate interview, he called WinStar “one of the best brands in the world.” Each week thousands of Texans take their money across state lines to gamble at casinos in Louisiana and Oklahoma. Turn on the TV and there’s Troy Aikman starring in commercials for Choctaw Casino. Coming soon: similar ads with Texas Rangers legend Pudge Rodriguez and Aikman’s old team- mate and 2024 Pro Football Hall-of-Fame nominee Darren Woodson. Oh, and where were many Texas high-school football play- off games played this month? Choctaw Sta- dium in Arlington, just across the street from the home of the 2023 World Series champions. By winning three Super Bowls in four years, Jones became a DFW hero despite fir- ing Landry. Cuban surely made Carter cringe when he introduced scantily clad dancers and blaring rap music to Mavs games, but he invited the founder on the stage to celebrate the team’s first champion- ship in Miami in 2011. The Mavs’ contract to play in American Airlines Center, which received an $18 mil- lion facelift last spring, runs through 2030. That means Jones, Cuban and Adelson have six(ish) years to bring gambling to Texas and a destination resort/area to Dallas-Fort Worth. When she takes over the business side of the Mavs in early 2024 — Cuban is retaining 25 percent and control of basketball opera- tions — Adelson will become the wealthiest sports owner in the U.S. Her and Cuban’s vi- sions are aligned, focused on a casino/arena complex. The wheels are already in motion. Though the plot of vacant land in Dallas that was once home to Reunion Arena was thought to be the front runner for such a development, a subdivision of Adelson’s company earlier this year bought 108 acres along Highway 114 in Irving, a stone’s throw from the site of old Texas Stadium. Dallas County tax records list the property’s value at $22 million. Said Cuban last summer, unveiling his ul- timate intentions for anyone paying atten- tion: “When you think of all the places you want to save up to vacation, Texas isn’t one of them. There’s no real destination here. That’s a problem, and I think resort gaming would have a huge impact.” He and Jones aren’t officially partnering in a unified front to bring casino gambling to Texas, but let’s just say introductions aren’t necessary. “Mark didn’t make (the decision to sell) being dumb,” Jones said. “I promise you, this will be in the best interest of sports and Mavericks fans. Miriam and her group are fine people. She’s outstanding. She’s a doc- tor, and is savvy, savvy, savvy. She’s got a good organization with her there, and will unquestionably do a great job.” Despite the Dream Team that’s willing to take on the Texas Legislature, which doesn’t meet again until January 2025, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson has his doubts. “That’s not something that just because the Legislature said can happen, just hap- pens,” Johnson said during a Dallas Re- gional Chamber luncheon earlier this month. “I haven’t been a part of those con- versations. I don’t feel like they’re really happening. At some point, if Mark’s serious about really having casino gambling and he’s serious about having it in Dallas, that’s a conversation a lot of people are willing to have. But we haven’t had it.” Cracking Texas’ conservative code and unleashing gambling is a tall order for even Cuban, Jones and their new power partner. But … Wanna bet against them? ▼ POLICE ‘ONE IS TOO MANY’ RAPE KIT BACKLOG WORK ISN’T COMPLETE IN TEXAS. BY KELLY DEARMORE A year ago, the number of untested sexual assault kits in Texas, and es- pecially in Dallas, was rather stag- gering. The pandemic, staffing shortages and a lack of funding were the primary rea- sons law enforcement agencies, including the Dallas Police Department, gave for the backlogged kits reaching into the thousands. To think of the catastrophic emotional impact a sexual assault has on the life of one victim is nearly unbearable. Multiply that by thousands and add to that the search for an- swers and, possibly, closure for each victim with their name on an untested kit, and it was a problem of titanic proportions. In 2021, it was reported that Dallas had the largest backlog of untested rape kits in the state of Texas. Over the course of 2023, however, a cer- tain amount of progress has been made to reduce the number of untested sexual as- sault kits throughout Texas and in Dallas. That’s thanks in part to $2.3 million ap- proved by the Dallas City Council in Decem- ber 2022 to test the backlogged kits. In Dallas, the backlog was divided into two groups. One group is sexual assault kits from 1996 to 2011, which are being tested at Virgina-based lab Bode Technology and paid for by federal grant funds. The other group consists of kits from 2011 to 2019 that are being tested locally at the Southwest In- stitute of Forensic Sciences (SWIFS). At the beginning of 2023, there were 1,880 sexual assault kits waiting to be tested between the two backlogs. According to an email from a spokesperson with the Dallas Police Department, all of the kits in the 1996–2011 backlog were sent to Bode Tech- nology for testing in 2023, and all of the kits from the 2011–2019 backlog have been sent to SWIFS for testing, leaving the DPD shelves empty at this point. In 2022, the Observer published a feature that examined why so many untested sexual assault kits (SAK) had piled up across the state. That was the same year that more than 14,000 sexual assaults were reported in Texas, according to the DPS. Even with House Bill 8 having been signed into law in 2019, there were many thousands of un- tested sexual assault kits in Texas when our 2022 article ran. HB 8, also known as the Lavinia Masters Act, was designed to address the backlog throughout Texas by dictating a timeline for SAKs to be tested and for the kits to be pre- served throughout the period covered by the statute of limitations. But the sort of prog- ress that Masters, the law’s namesake, had hoped to see in the first few years following the bill’s enactment had yet to be made as 2022 ended. Masters was raped in her Dallas home in 1985 when she was 13. She waited for more than 20 years for her SAK to be processed before her case was finally reopened, only for the statute of limitations to have already passed. Her attacker went on to commit other rapes. For years prior to HB 8 becom- ing law, Masters campaigned for sexual as- sault kit reform, lobbying the state Unfair Park from p4 Tim Heitman/Getty Images Mark Cuban placed a wager on sports gambling coming to Texas with his sale of a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to Las Vegas casino magnate Miriam Adelson.
