If Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies on the Chicago City Council have their way, those bars and restaurants will never get to plug in video poker and slot machines.

The budget totals $55.9 billion, supported by a similar amount of revenue. The spending plan included an $830 million supplemental current-year spending plan, meaning the upcoming fiscal year 2027 budget is essentially flat.

The Chicago City Council’s License and Consumer Protection Committee voted to ban the thousands of unpermitted sweepstakes machines that operate in all kinds of businesses across the city, including in bars, restaurants, gas stations, laundromats and convenience stores.

The rapid growth of prediction markets has sparked a high-stakes debate that is playing out in courts and legislatures all over the country.

The order seeks to prevent insider trading by strengthening guardrails amid the rapid growth of online prediction markets and event-based gambling contracts, the governor’s office said.

The vote came after officials with Bally’s Corp. issued the most direct warning to the City Council that its move to green-light video gaming would kneecap the city’s permanent casino, scheduled to open in River West later this year.

Once a niche interest, prediction markets have broken through to a wider audience. Now, lawmakers and the public are trying to adapt to a world where people can bet on almost anything.

The ordinances rejected by the committee would have banned video slots and poker machines in the 26th Ward, the 27th Ward, the 28th Ward, the 33rd Ward, the 35th Ward and the 49th Ward.

The number of people visiting the temporary casino at River North’s Medinah Temple failed to grow from 2024 to 2025, leading to a 1.3% drop in tax revenues,

“DePaul University is deeply disappointed that former student-athletes were named in the indictment for alleged gambling activities during the 2023-2024 men’s basketball season,” a university spokesperson said.

Illinois lawmakers passed two dozen bills during their annual fall veto session that ended Friday, Oct. 31, including a measure that will empower the state’s Department of Public Health to issue vaccine guidelines amid federal uncertainty.

Despite the study's findings, members of the City Council’s Subcommittee on Revenue, facing a likely deficit of nearly $1.2 billion in the city’s 2026 spending plan, were not ready to fold and walk away from the table.

The Chicago Police Department exceeded its nearly $2 billion budget, approved by the Chicago City Council, by $207 million, according to city data.

In the backstretch of the legislative session, horse racing advocates are pushing to revitalize the industry in Illinois and its accompanying horse betting, both long in decline.

Instead of going to a casino to play poker or a bar to play the slots, so-called iGaming participants could play on their tablets or phones, a change that backers told lawmakers at a Springfield hearing on Wednesday could bring in another $1 billion annually.

Nearly 70% of those revenues came from the $44 million in flat fees Bally’s agreed to pay in 2023 and 2024 as part of the deal approved by the City Council in 2022 that ended a 30-year effort to bring casino gambling to Chicago.