Written by :
Published on :
Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton (R, 25th District) is alleged to have tried to help keep a payday lender’s struggling sports gambling company alive, and now he's come under intense scrutiny.
Reports suggest that Sexton took steps that allowed the owners of a payday lending company, Advance Financial, to keep using their stores to boost the now-defunct online sports betting enterprise.
Michael and Tina Hodges, owners of Action 247, had previously turned to the Tennessee Speaker of the House in 2014 to create a new triple-digit interest loan called a “Flex Loan.” The couple’s company, Advance Financial, through the Flex Loan, went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars lending to the state’s most financially vulnerable. That lender would go on to sue some 110,000 residents of the state.
It should be noted that Tennessee does not have a law preventing pay day lenders from owning a sportsbook.
In 2021, Tennessee regulators had launched an investigation into Action 247.
pictured above: Cameron Sexton
From The Tennessee Lookout:
From November 2020 through Jan. 16, when Action 247 closed, this was happening. A person could walk into any Advance Financial storefront and borrow up to $4,000 at a 279.5% interest rate. Then, at the same window, the customer could legally tell the store’s employee to deposit cash into an Action 247 account, through which they could gamble the money on something like a football game.
Members of the Tennessee Education Lottery Corp., which oversaw sports gambling at the time, were concerned by the arrangement and the company, but the agency’s board was prevented from doing anything about it by its attorney in January 2021. Two months later, the board attempted to assert its power over Action 247 by suspending its license for violations related to its failure to ensure that customers adhered to state gambling laws; ultimately, Action 247 went to court, where a judge lifted the suspension but allowed the agency to continue its investigation.
Sexton would reportedly intervene.
When it appeared lottery officials weren’t going to drop their ongoing investigation into Action, Sexton pushed through legislation to remove the board’s control over sports betting. Less than a month after the closed-door meeting with Lanigan, the state lottery was out of sports gaming and a new regulator, over whom members of the legislature could wield more control, was in.
Sexton responded to the news outlets’ questions with a statement in which he said that creating the new regulatory body was a policy decision that included members of the lottery.
After the lottery lost control of sports gambling, it ended the investigation into Action. The company survived, but as one of the smallest sportsbooks in Tennessee. National brands have dominated sports betting in the state.
On January 16, Tina Hodges announced that Action 247 would be shutting its doors for good.
“The current landscape for state-licensed online sports gambling in the United States has proven to be unviable and unprofitable for all operators in the industry," Hodges said in a statement.
While Tennessee does not report sportsbook revenues or handle, Action 247 was widely viewed as having one of the smallest market shares in the sector.
Tennessee was among the first states to legalize sports betting and the only state to do so that did not have any existing land-based gambling venues.
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
