When online games begin soon in Pennsylvania, gamblers with smartphones will be able to gamble almost anywhere in the state. You can gamble at work. You can gamble at school. You can gamble at bars. You can gamble at leopards.
You can even gamble in a pew with your head down. Say amen. But there’s one place in the Commonwealth where you can’t make a mutual bet, and it’s from inside 13 licensed state casinos.
Under Pennsylvania’s expanded gaming laws, which legalized a variety of new ways gamblers bet, licensed operators must prevent players from accessing interactive games while inside casinos, and use the same mobile phone technology to determine whether they are actually within state boundaries.
Some officials say the curious exclusions, which do not apply to sports betting, were inserted into an earlier version of the bill to protect tax revenues. The tax rate on online betting was lower than the one originally bet at casinos. 바카라
The legislation, which was finally approved by the General Assembly, equaled the rate for online gaming and land-based casinos with a rate of 54 percent for virtual or real slot machines. However, the bills say the language of building electronic ring fences around casinos has survived.
“It probably slipped in the final version,” said Tony Ritchie, chief executive of Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment, the parent company of Parks Casino. “Honestly, when you see it, what it means is fickle right now. It complicates things in many ways.”
Some insiders say the casino exclusion was not a director, but a small concession to the horse racing industry, which received about 10 percent of its revenue from a casino slot machine with a $239 million stake last year. Under the new law, the Pennsylvania Racetrack Development Trust will still be subject to action on some of the slots, but will receive nothing from interactive gaming, including online slots.
“You don’t want anyone betting on online slots while you’re at the bottom of the casino, and horsemen won’t get cut from what’s promised,” said Lindsay Slader, vice president of regulation at Geocomply, a provider of geolocation services used by online operators to verify the exact location of online players.
Two Bucks County Republican senators involved in the gaming bill, Robert “Tommy” Tomlinson and Chuck McIlney, did not respond to requests for comment.
The provision is likely to affect only a small portion of the casino business. According to Slader, geolocation services reported that about 1% of New Jersey’s online gaming revenue comes from players actually located in casino facilities.
The provision is likely to affect only a small portion of the casino business. According to Slader, geolocation services reported that about 1% of New Jersey’s online gaming revenue comes from players actually located in casino facilities.
The harness racing industry acknowledged last year that Pennsylvania’s game expansion bill, which legalized online betting, mini casinos and truck-stopping video game terminals, would likely erode some businesses from casino slot machines, the lifeblood of horse racing. But the alternative was worse, as some horse racing opponents wanted deeper cuts to casino horse racing support.
“If all of these extended gaming options are implemented, they could have a smaller impact than future legislative investigations into the fund in negative cases,” the Pennsylvania Horseman Society said in a 2017 statement.
Pennsylvania’s online games, which include poker, mock slot machines, table games like blackjack and more, will be released by the end of the year.
In New Jersey, where online gaming began five years ago, internet betting posted $190 million in revenue in the first eight months of the year, with casino gaming seeing annual growth of 16.5%, compared with near-flat growth. Online betting generates about 11% of casino gaming revenue, but because it is taxed at a higher rate, it accounts for 19% of the $150 million in state taxes raised so far this year.
Regulators and industry experts say protecting the racing industry’s market share by installing electronic ring fences around Pennsylvania casinos is not particularly challenging.
Four states that have legalized online betting can use geospatial technology to block out-of-state players, and fine-tune the same technology to “geofences” of locations in certain states.
Some states have considered blocking schools, government buildings, penitents or tribal reservations to protect certain communities from gaming. But Pennsylvania is the only state that has enacted such an exclusion, leaving its casinos in a special, electronically protected bracket.
The geolocation service can read the unique numeric address assigned to each electronic device, “ping” the player’s mobile phone to triangulate the location within a few feet, which must be turned on. In New Jersey, where online gaming became legal in 2013, casinos block illegal out-of-state gamblers with stern warnings that repeated violations would result in permanent deportation.
Geolocation software also briefly scans players’ devices to make sure no programs run to disguise the bettors’ real locations, such as virtual private networks. Companies like Vancouver, British Columbia-based Geocomply say they hire dozens of engineers to keep up with the new spoofing software.