Panel Predicts Online Gambling Expansion in New York, Maryland, Possibly California
Internet gaming, iGaming, and Online Gaming: different names, but they all mean one thing — the ability to responsibly access games of chance on an internet-ready device without needing to visit a brick-and-mortar casino physically. It is not to be confused with sports betting. While both involve staking money on possible outcomes in hopes of making more money, they are not the same. One area where the disparity is most obvious is when you look at the number of states that allow either.
Washington and Thirty-Seven states allow sports betting within their borders, and only seven states allow internet gambling—one down until a couple of months ago when Rhode Island began its internet gambling journey.
Members of a panel at an online gambling conference believe that the misunderstanding is not only with sports betting but extends to what internet gambling is capable of and has to offer. The Chairman of the Gambling Industry Caucus and West Virginia state delegate, Shawn Fluharty, believes his colleagues are not adequately grasping the magnitude of internet gambling. He went on to say that when we “talk about i-gaming, and they think we’re talking about video games” and that he has “colleagues who struggle to silence their phones, and we’re going to tell them gambling can be done on their phones?”
He argues that his colleagues can not believe how far technology has advanced internet gambling; they are unwilling to accept that people can now enjoy the same services as they do at physical casinos with applications on their mobile phones and computers. They are unwilling to accept that wagers can now be settled using cryptocurrencies on crypto casinos and that they will get more security and anonymity with a casino that accepts MetaMask as the self-custodial nature of the MetaMask crypto wallet gives the user uncontested access to their money.
Fluharty is not alone in his thinking; Joseph Patrick Addabbo Jr., a senator from New York, believes they have been selling the idea of crypto/anonymous casinos and online gambling as a whole wrongly to lawmakers. He believes that making it about new games, jackpots, live dealers, and table games the user can enjoy from these crypto casinos will not have the desired effect on lawmakers. Rather than making it another entertainment option for Californians, like concerts in the park, the argument will have a better chance of sticking if it was made about how much tax dollars can be generated from online gambling. If lawmakers see that projects being proposed are intended to be funded by online gambling revenue, they just might have a change of heart on the matter.
To put things into perspective, a Maryland study projects that the introduction of internet gambling to the state will generate revenue just shy of a billion dollars by 2029 while costing brick-and-mortar casinos only $200 million at the same time. A major concern for lawmakers is that this reduction in brick-and-mortar casino revenue could cascade into a four to eight percent reduction in labor, but Brian Wyman, an analytics and Data Expert of The Innovation Group (TIG), was introduced by the Director of Maryland Lottery & Gaming Control Agency in John Martin to explain how a proposal to impose lower tax rates on corporations offering live dealer services will create more jobs and cancel out the fears of labor reduction.
When you consider that these numbers describe Maryland, a state about sixteen times smaller than California, it becomes clearer how much internally generated revenue will be available when the state finally approves online gambling. According to Edward King, Acies Investments’ founding partner, “It’s an inevitability for a state the size of California,” he said. “The tax dollars are too big.” He’s convinced that as soon as all the confusion between tribal and commercial operators is resolved, online gambling will become a staple in The Golden State.
It is for these reasons and many more that these panelists believe that California, New York, and Maryland are the likeliest candidates to start offering internet casino games soon. While it looks all but assured, citizens of these states can only wait in expectation as all the legal and regulatory hurdles resolve themselves.
