The Future of Online Gambling in the US |
Posted: June 29, 2017 |
Online gambling certainly has a past in the US - but does it have a future? Until 2006, when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) effectively pushed online gambling venues out of the country, the US was one of the most attractive markets for casinos and poker rooms. After all, it was the country with the most internet users who also happened to have money to spend. The bill instantly pushed hundreds of companies out of business and left others with major holes in their budgets - PartyPoker operator Party Gaming, for example, has seen its stocks fall by over 60% in one day. Online casino operators responded by banning all users from the US, a policy that's been in force ever since. The online casino business did survive the blast, though, thanks to the regulated markets in the rest of the world, even though the legal climate became rather unfriendly to the industry. Canada, for example, turned online gambling into a state monopoly - for a long time, the only casino Canada allowed to function legally was EspaceJeux, run by Quebec's provincial lottery corporation. International operators like the All Slots are not allowed to promote their services in Canada to this day, yet there is no law against them accepting Canadian players. So, Canadians with no access to legal - local - online casinos at home are free to visit the All Slots, even though this means that their money - and their taxes - are continuously leaving the country. The US is not that permissive - or seemingly it isn't. According to online casino specialist PlayUSA, there are 44 states in the US that offer some form of online gambling to its residents. Most of the times these are online lotteries, social casinos, and daily fantasy sports. Two states - namely Delaware and Nevada - have decided to regulate online poker years ago, while one of them - New Jersey - has decided to open up its market to online casinos (and the revenues reported by the state seem to prove their decision was the right one). When it comes to the future of online gambling in the US, the signals sent by the federal government and the states' legislatures are mixed, to say the least. On one hand, the Republican Party has last year tried to push through a piece of legislation that would have banned all forms of online gambling, including online lottery ticket sales, at a federal level. On the other, there are 26 states that are either discussing or considering to regulate online gambling in one form or another. The latest in the series of states that have made a move toward legal online gambling is Illinois - the state's Senate has approved a bill to regulate online gambling has been pushed through at last minute. Will more states regulate online gambling? Well, they just might - they have a strong incentive in the form of tax revenues the business can generate. According to recent estimates, the three states that have legalized real money online poker and casinos have boosted their tax revenues approximately $200 million in 2016 alone.
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