Regulated Online Gambling Coming to the Keystone State?

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Monday, April 22nd, 2013 | Written by Shane Larson

Another state has tossed its hat into the online gambling regulation ring. Pennsylvania is the latest to consider launching fully legal (and tightly controlled) gambling over the Internet thanks to a proposed bill from Rep. Tina Davis.

At present, the full text of the bill has yet to be released. But – according to reports from industry observers – both the tax rate and the license fee are dramatically lower than the rates set in initial proposals to regulate online gambling in PA.

Davis’ bill is recorded as HB 1235. You can track the bill at the official site for the Pennsylvania legislature here. There’s no set time frame for the bill text to be released. In fact, the changes to the tax rate and application fee suggest that the terms of the bill are still being negotiated. That means even what little we know about the bill now is absolutely subject to change in the coming days.

The introduction of the bill comes months after Rep. Davis first indicated her interest in proposing an online poker bill. Interestingly, the bill was briefly submitted – four roughly an hour – in late March, only to be immediately pulled. It’s not known what reasons led to the rapid withdrawal of the bill, but one imagines the tax and license fees were a matter of no small conflict among the groups developing the legislation.

Will the bill enjoy a reasonable chance of passage? Until the complete details of the bill to regulate online gambling in PA are made public, it will remain difficult to speculate as to the likelihood that Representative Davis’ legislative efforts will be successful. But the land-based casinos operating in the state include a number of national operators – such as Caesars – that will almost certainly push aggressively for some measure allowing online gambling in Pennsylvania.

Countering those forces will be a Republican-dominated legislature that may view any gambling expansion with a suspicious eye. How the needs of these stakeholders will be balanced is but one question we’ll have to wait on the full bill text to answer.

It’s unclear what games will be included under Rep. Davis’ proposal, or what deposit methods will be permitted. As to the question of whether Pennsylvania will participate in interstate agreements for games like poker or progressive slots, answers will similarly be unavailable until the complete text of the bill is presented. We also have no information on how the bill will treat sites like PokerStars that have accepted US customers in the past.

You can check the above link for updates on the bill, or bookmark our poker news section to receive updates on this and other efforts to regulate online poker in the United States. And you can also view our updated list of the poker sites currently accepting US customers.

Regulated gambling – at least the large-scale, full casino experience that you can now find in a number of places in the state – is a relatively new industry for Pennsylvania. For years, residents of the state had to make the trip over to Atlantic City in order to play slots, roulette or other casino-style games. Wagering in PA was largely limited to placing bets at the horse track – and, of course, the occasional bet with a local bookmaker.

Pennsylvania joins an ever-growing number of states in the U.S. that are considering some form of regulated gambling. New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware have already passed far-reaching bills to regulated a variety of online gambling activity. Illinois already offers lottery sales online and is considering a number of other bills to bring more games online. And Massachusetts is reportedly considering a number of paths to real-money, regulated online gambling.

Pennsylvania will almost certainly find itself behind most, if not all of those states in the race to launch regulated online poker and gambling. But due to the state’s size and apparent appetite for gambling, Pennsylvania could easily turn out to be the most valuable market of any state considering online gambling regulation to date – save California.