The situation with online gambling legislation in Pennsylvania is getting tougher by the hour mostly thanks to the fact that local lawmakers are making things more complicated than they have to.
The Pennsylvania legislature has been making some efforts to make up for the constantly increasing budget deficit with a gaming revenue estimated to approximately $100 million. However, they are perfectly aware that in order to succeed in this endeavour, they first need to come up with a suitable solution for the share tax issue throughout the state.
The soft deadline of the share tax issue is set on May 25th, while the hard deadline is set on July 15th. Time is ticking away, as the state authorities need to do something if they want to put the money collected from online gaming licensing fees in various investments within the 2016/2017 budget.
The matter of online gambling legislation and regulation is currently stuck in the Pennsylvania Senate, which has also been put under a lot of pressure regarding the proposed gambling bill. But it seems that the local legislature which is making things harder. The simplest solution that could be found is passing a reform piece of legislation which is very much resemblant to the bills that have been presented by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for about three years now.
It is the Pennsylvania Senate’s Court that has to take the next step in terms of gambling legislation. The Senate CERD Committee has been reported to be working on its own version of a new gambling bill that would make certain reforms, including making both online gambling and daily fantasy sports legal, regulating the afore-mentioned activities, and restoring the local share tax. The Committee’s gaming reform bill has been also reported to be focused on allowing tablet gaming at some airports across the state, as well as allowing multi-state progressive slot machines.
For the time being, there has hardly been any change in the situation with the gambling legislation in Pennsylvania. The casinos have been facing six months of declining slot revenue, with the performance of local table games offsetting the disappointing results a bit. On the other hand, online gambling has remained unstable for several years now, the proponents of the online gambling legislation have been claiming that the local land-based casinos would be able to benefit from making iGaming legal in the state.
By adding online gambling to the permitted gaming activities in Pennsylvania, local legislature will make sure that new revenue will be generated. Also, according to the proponents of the new piece of legislation, the addition of online gambling to the legal gambling activities in Pennsylvania would help local operators make their customers more engaged with the offered services, and also new customers would be attracted.
- Author
Daniel Williams
