Pennsylvania To Hold Online Poker Hearing TuesdayHouse To Hold Hearing, But Senate Needs To Approve Plan |
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Pennsylvania lawmakers will hold a highly anticipated hearing on online casinos next week. Online poker efforts were heating up earlier this year before the legislation was put on hold until the fall.
The Tuesday hearing will be a “review of states which currently have fantasy sports and/or I-gaming,” according to the House Gaming Oversight Committee’s website.
Pennsylvania’s casino gambling market is worth $3 billion annually, with about $60 million from peer-to-peer poker. Ten of the Keystone State’s 12 casinos have poker rooms. Pennsylvania has roughly 250 poker tables.
A matured Keystone State online gambling market has been estimated at $300 million a year, which would add about 10 percent to the state’s already-existing casino gambling market. The online casinos would be taxed at a 16-percent rate.
Lawmakers this summer approved a massive spending bill that includes a plan for $100 million from online gambling, so online casinos are very much still in play as the 2016 legislative session winds down.
The House passed an online casino bill in June, but the Senate hasn’t taken it up yet. Lawmakers there will have to approve online gambling and then the proposal would be sent to the governor.
According to Pennsylvania Rep. John Payne, sponsor of the online gambling bill, there have been about 50 meetings and hearings for online gaming over just the past year and a half.
If it legalizes online gaming, Pennsylvania would become just the fourth state in the country to do so. The legislation would not prohibit the state from sharing liquidity with another state. Only Nevada and Delaware have partnered for online poker so far.
The motivation behind online casinos is not only tax revenue but to keep the state’s gaming industry competitive in a region with more than 40 casinos and racinos, and more in the pipeline from states like New York and Massachusetts.
New Jersey, which has more than 90 percent of the regulated online casino gambling market in America, could approve two new casinos for the northern part of the state.
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