“Today is a great day to celebrate and have a little bit of fun doing so,” Beshear said.
“It has taken many years to get here, but sports wagering is finally a reality in Kentucky.”
Beshear bet $20 each on the University of Louisville and University of Kentucky football teams to beat their projected win totals this season. He bet another $20 that Duke University would fall short of its projected win total.
Any winnings would go to the Louisville Sports Commission, the governor’s office said.
Kentucky is the 35th state to legalize sports betting, with betting on all sports permitted at participating horse racing tracks.
Nine new locations opened ahead of the NFL kickoff on Thursday night, and mobile betting is set to begin later this month.
Sports betting is expected to generate upwards of $23 million in tax revenue each year for the Bluegrass State, most of which will go toward public employee pensions, The Associated Press reported.
Kentucky Republicans moved to pass the sports betting bill at the end of the state’s legislative session in March, and the bill gained bipartisan support as Beshear seeks reelection this fall.
His Republican challenger Attorney General Daniel Cameron minimized Beshear’s role in the move, celebrating instead the state’s Republican Legislature.
“The legislature deserves the credit for moving this ball down the field. Beshear once again is trying to take credit for this victory when all he did was cheer from the sidelines,” Sean Southard, a Cameron campaign spokesman, said in a statement to the AP.
The Hill’s Nick Robertson has more here.
