West Virginia Online Sports Betting Offline Since March 6

West Virginia sports bettors haven’t been able to wager online since March 6 thanks to some shady business decisions from a London-based gaming company that was running the online operations.

Delaware North, owner of Wheeling Island and Mardi Gras Casinos in West Virginia, partnered with Miomni Gaming to run both their brick and mortar and online sportsbooks last October. The partnership allowed Delaware North to use the BetLucky app for their online sports betting operation.

The app went down just before the start of March Madness and the two casinos haven’t been able to accept bets since. Miomni blamed a contract dispute with Entergaming, a third-party technology provider from Cyprus. Entergaming owns the technology that the BetLucky app runs on.

After six weeks without their online platform, Delaware North filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court. The lawsuit alleges that Miomni misrepresented its stake in the BetLucky app.

Since the suit has been filed, details have surfaced showing Miomni claimed that it owned a stake in the code used by Entergaming to run BetLucky.

It did not.

According to the lawsuit, Entergaming sent a letter in February to Miomni that terminated the agreement in place between the two parties and Entergaming would not be allowing Miomni access to its services.

Since the shutdown, West Virginia is down to just three in-person sportsbooks. There is no timeline for mobile betting to reopen. Delaware North has taken steps to completely severe ties with Miomni.

Simply put, the sports betting situation in West Virginia is a mess.

At a meeting of the state’s Lottery Commission on Wednesday, John Myers, the director of the commission, said that Delaware North would have to start from scratch to get its sports betting operation running again.

He cited the need for the partnership between Delaware North and Miomni to be completely dissolved before finding a new partnership with a different provider.

“I think one of the concerns is whether they have to completely separate from Miomni before they can begin a new relationship,” said Myers. “That’s to be determined and their legal staff have to make that determination. It’s certainly something that we have to consider as we’re setting expectations.”

In West Virginia, the Lottery Commission acts as the regulatory body.

In March, even without online sports betting, the remaining books generated just shy of $2 million in sports betting revenue. The state taxes 10 percent of that revenue and took $196,000.

West Virginia will have online casinos coming soon as well. They became the fifth state to legalize all forms of online gambling last month.

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