North Carolina Lawmakers Want To Pay High School Coaches With Sports Betting Taxes

Lawmakers in North Carolina are proposing the state use a new revenue source to help pay high school coaches.

That source?

Sports betting.

Dubbed the Keeping Our Coaches Act, Senate Bill 657 was filed last week. It’s a bipartisan bill sponsored by three Democrats and three Republicans. It already had its first reading last Wednesday and currently sits with the Committee On Rules and Operations of the Senate.

The bill would set aside $11 million of taxes from North Carolina sportsbooks annually “to provide salary supplements to all eligible athletic coaches” at public schools “to ensure that each eligible athletic coach receives a total annual salary supplement for serving as an athletic coach of at least three thousand dollars ($3,000).”

The $3,000 minimum would be significant, as there is currently no minimum coaching stipend for North Carolina public schools. Only coaches who are full-time employees of the school and who currently receive locally funded coaching stipends of $3,000 or less would be eligible for a piece of the $11 million.

If passed, the bill would go into effect July 1, in time for the 2025-26 school year.

‘We know what the guys in South Carolina are making’

High school coaches leaving has been a topic of discussion for years in North Carolina.

What makes the topic even more noteworthy is that many coaching talents in North Carolina have left for … South Carolina.

In March 2024, Marlboro County School District in South Carolina — just south of the North Carolina border — hired eight North Carolina coaches all at once.

Probably the most notable departure was Cory Johnson, who coached Clinton High School in North Carolina to a 61-12 record with one state title over six years before getting plucked away by Marlboro County.

In 2022, The State, a newspaper based in Columbia, South Carolina, did an investigation on high school football coaches’ salaries in the state. It found that 34 varsity head coaches received more than $100,000 annually — up significantly from 2016, when that number was 16.

“It’s not a secret. Coaches in North Carolina, we know what the guys in South Carolina are making and it’s not a secret,” Allen Wittenberg, then the head coach at Hickory High School, told WSOC-TV in 2016.

North Carolina moving faster than Florida

North Carolina isn’t the first state to have officials discuss paying high school coaches with money from legalized sports betting.

In November 2024, Florida Rep. Adam Anderson partnered with the Florida Coaches Coalition to push for a $15 minimum wage for high school coaches. At the time, he told a local news station sports betting could be a potential revenue source for the pay increase, and he hoped to bring the discussion to fellow lawmakers when the Florida Legislature convened in March 2025.

(He has not yet introduced a bill regarding high school coaches’ salaries.)

As is the case in North Carolina, motivation in Florida stems from watching the state’s top coaches flee for higher salaries elsewhere.

“There’s much more realization in the state and I just think over the last few years, coaches speaking up, members of local community speaking up have really raised the issue to a point where legislators have to take notice and they have to take action,” Andrew Ramjit, executive director of the Florida Coaches Coalition, told News4Jax in February. “I think it’s just all the frustration of coaches leaving to go to Georgia, to go to Texas. Our profession in the state of Florida cannot survive if coaches keep leaving.”

With a bill on the table, North Carolina is currently further along than Florida.

North Carolina is already one of the more creative states when it comes to what sports betting tax revenue funds.

The state currently directs a portion of earnings toward a youth sports grant, allowing organizations to secure funding for equipment and facility enhancements. Additionally, sports betting revenue contributes to supporting the state’s HBCUs.

Along the same lines, the Keeping Our Coaches Act says that, if not all $11 million is needed, leftover funds would go toward the “North Carolina Alliance of YMCAs, Inc. to support youth sports programming.”

Comes out to $19K per school

According to the latest U.S. News & World Report data, there are 576 public high schools in North Carolina. If each school used an equal portion of the $11 million, it would come out to $19,097.22 per school. However, this won’t be the case, as only coaches that currently receive a stipend of $3,000 or less will be eligible for the funds.

But this is helpful to get a sense of how the money breakdown looks at a statewide scale.

North Carolina launched online sports betting in March 2024. Through its first year with legalized sportsbooks, the state collected $131.3 million in tax payments from operators. There is an 18% tax in the state on sports betting revenue.