States in the US are under pressure to legalize online casinos as unregulated offshore iGaming sites grow in popularity. Experts in the field argue over whether iGaming increases tax revenue, safeguards players, or jeopardizes local jobs and the profits of physical casinos.
In recent years, nearly every national gaming industry panel has included a discussion of the friction between retail casino owners and iGaming providers attempting to have their products legalized in more jurisdictions. The inevitable concern that usually arises: Will internet casino licensing devour the earnings of brick-and-mortar casinos, jeopardizing thousands of jobs at those establishments?
However, amid the customary argument at the Saratoga Racing and Gaming Conference on Tuesday, FanDuel executive James Hartmann chose to reframe the entire issue around the reality that unlicensed and unregulated offshore iGaming sites already exist.
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“The question shouldn’t be, ‘Should there or there should there not be iGaming?'” Hartmann stated. “There is already iGaming, and Americans bet hundreds of billions of dollars on it each year, except that 43 states [without authorized iGaming] receive no tax revenue.” The gambling is done through offshore companies that are unconcerned about appropriate gaming procedures. So, do you want tax revenue or do you want your folks to be protected? “That is the real question.”
What politicians in the United States are frequently confronted with on the iGaming issue are claims from renowned industry experts that are so conflicting that panel moderator Kim Copp, an attorney for the Chicago-based law firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, called the discrepancy as “stunning.”
In February 2024, Eilers & Krejcik’s 32-page analysis stated that in six states that had allowed iGaming, land-based casino revenue had increased by an average of 2.44% since the new gaming option was introduced. The report was commissioned by iDEA (the iDevelopment and Economic Association), which calls itself “the leading trade association for online gaming in the United States.”
Courtesy: https://www.covers.com, https://www.casino.org, https://pechanga.net
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