The House voted 156-3 on Thursday to pass its sports betting bill, something a bipartisan parade of representatives said was long overdue.

Some said they hoped the House's lopsided vote would send a message to the Senate, which has been less enthusiastic about sports betting.

"I represent a district which borders New Hampshire," said Rep. Andy Vargas, of Haverhill. "In Haverhill, you can literally walk across the border into New Hampshire and place a bet. I know that my constituents who partake in sports wagering would rather place these bets in their homes and in their own state and would rather have any revenue collected going towards benefiting their home state of Massachusetts."

For Rep. Dan Cahill, of Lynn, Thursday's vote was about something even simpler.

"Most important, it's just fun. People are allowed to have fun," he said. "And sports betting is fun."

ut even before the House voted, House Speaker Ronald Mariano, D-Quincy,  declared that leaving collegiate betting out of any bill "probably would be" a deal-breaker.

"I find myself having a tough time trying to justify going through all of this to not include probably the main driver of betting in the commonwealth," he said on Bloomberg Baystate Radio.

Massachusetts has been considering whether to expand gambling here since the U.S. Supreme Court in May 2018 ruled that the nearly nationwide prohibition on sports wagering was unconstitutional.

"Some may say that this is bringing sports betting to Massachusetts. The fact is that our Massachusetts residents are already betting on sports. They're either taking that short drive up to New Hampshire or to Rhode Island, where it's legal, or they're also going on their phones and using offshore applications, those sportsbooks, to bet or they're also going to a bookie," Rep. Jerald Parisella, who chairs the Committee on Economic Development, said while outlining the bill for the House on Thursday. "But what this does do is it brings it out of the shadows and into the light, and makes it legal in Massachusetts."

Thirty states, including Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New York, have authorized gamblers to place legal bets on sports in some fashion. Meanwhile, illicit gambling continues to attract bettors in Massachusetts.

"We're surrounded," Parisella said.

The House bill would put sports betting under the purview of the Gaming Commission, require that all bettors be at least 21 years old and physically present in Massachusetts, and implement consumer safeguards to protect against problem gambling similar to those put in place for casinos when Massachusetts expanded gambling in 2011.

Sports betting sites

MGM Springfield, Encore Boston Harbor, Plainridge Park Casino, the state's two simulcasting facilities and racetracks that host live horse racing (right now the only one is at Plainridge Park) would be granted licenses to take in-person wagers as long as they meet rules and requirements of the Gaming Commission.

They would be allowed to have between one and three mobile sports betting platforms, depending on the facility. Mobile-only operators could also seek licenses and every license would carry a $5 million fee.

"We estimate if all those licenses go out, the commonwealth could get $70 million to $80 million just in licensing fees," Parisella said Thursday.

A sportsbook's revenue from in-person bets would be taxed at 12.5 percent and revenue from mobile wagers at 15 percent. Parisella said the higher tax on mobile operators recognizes the added costs that brick-and-mortar facilities would have and aims to drive customers to businesses that employ people in Massachusetts.

"I believe a conservative estimate is that we'll raise about $60 million annually from the taxes on the sports betting," Parisella said, citing a number higher than most previous estimates for sports betting in Massachusetts. "And as it gets matured, we believe that those numbers could rise."

If college betting is not allowed, Mariano said, the revenue estimate would drop to between $25 million and $35 million annually.

An additional 1 percent tax would be levied on wagers placed on sporting events held in Massachusetts, to be distributed proportionately between the facilities that hosted the events to be used for "sports wagering security and integrity."

The House bill would allow wagers on the outcome of college sports contests, but not on the performances of individual college athletes.

Whether to allow bets on college athletics has been a recurring theme in the three years that lawmakers have spent considering sports betting, and it is shaping up as the most significant difference between the House bill and Sen. Eric Lesser's sports betting bill. That legislation is before the Senate Ways and Means Committee and is expected to be the Senate's vehicle if or when it takes up the issue.

"If we are going to get a bill done, we both have to move," Mariano said on Bloomberg when asked about the different feelings toward collegiate betting in the House and the Senate.

Through a Rep. Paul McMurtry amendment, the House on Thursday added a provision to its sports betting bill that would allow the Gaming Commission to grant licenses to let some veterans' organizations operate up to five slot machines. That is also likely to be a point of divergence with the Senate.