Now that there are four states – Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania – that have passed some form of regulation regarding online gaming and poker, there are plenty of people wondering who will be next to take the plunge (and, on a side note, if it will take as long as it did for Pennsylvania to step up after the “Original Three”). While many might think that it would be California due to its decade long dalliance with the subject, there’s actually another frontrunner coming to the fore.
At this moment, the best bet appears to be New York due to the confluence of several factors. First off, as it is most often in life, financial issues seem to be driving the push for online gaming and/or poker regulation in the state. According to the New York Post in 2016, the state of New York was facing “official” debt of $59 billion. That dollar amount could be as much as four billion off, however, because of what is called “backdoor borrowing” by the state. That would make the debt for the Empire State as much as $63 billion. That total debt is behind only Illinois, whose decades of nonpayment into the state pension program have them roughly $90 billion in the hole (Illinois, likewise, has dabbled with legalization of online gaming).
Honestly, a regulated online poker industry in New York state isn’t going to be the cure all for a debt of such magnitude. But the proposed regulations – which show that eleven licenses would be sold for upwards of $15 million each and taxation of revenues on top of that – would offer up a sizeable chunk of change for the state to use on a variety of issues, including that $4 billion in “backdoor borrowing” that has occurred outside the publicly approved debt.
Secondly, the legislation has already been walked through the different bodies in Albany that have to approve it. Last year State Senator John Bonacic was able to get his sponsored legislation through committee, but it never got to the floor for a vote. On the other side of the General Assembly, State Representative Gary Pretlow was either more pragmatic or wasn’t as aggressive as Bonacic had been, not pushing his sponsored legislation through the House before the end of the session.
With the new year, both men are ramping up their engines and refiling new bills. For Bonacic, he has S3898 primed for action in the Senate, with the 11 operating licenses regulations in the bill and further taxation regulations spelled out. Many in the General Assembly feel that, if a bill was to pass, Bonacic’s bill is the one that should be followed. Pretlow also has his bill, A5250, but with his reluctance to push the bill it hasn’t been able to garner a following.
Finally, along with New Jersey and Pennsylvania, there is no more prime an opportunity for compacting than there is now. If New York were to enact their own online poker outlet, they would be the “cherry on top” for getting into a compact and creating a Northeastern powerhouse poker network. Even without the compacting, New York’s 20 million citizens would make for a very strong intrastate poker network on its own.
Something that would make the New York system even stronger is if it were a full online casino gaming outlet, however. New Jersey, right now the largest state to have an online casino and poker outlet (Pennsylvania will barely take that honor once it comes online), has seen outstanding revenues for their online casino operations. Of the $245.6 million that the Jersey online industry generated in 2017, $221.3 million of it has been generated from casino gaming (slots, table games, keno). Only $24.3 million of the revenues – roughly $2 million per month – has been generated from the online poker rooms in the Garden State. From looking at those statistics, many would say that any state looking at online gaming and poker regulation would benefit more from a full-fledged system than just licensing online poker.
If there were one thing that may put the kibosh on any of this from happening would be the fact that it is an election year. Every seat in the State Senate and Assembly are up for grabs as well as the Governor’s seat and other executive offices (Governor Andrew Cuomo has already stated he is running for a third term). A position taken in a non-election year can quickly change as legislators, looking to curry favor with the public, can flip to the opposite side should their political life depend on it. Thus, it is critical to watch these elected officials and see who is willing to stand on their principles.
Are there other states that might slip past New York? Sure. But the Empire State has all the right conditions to pass online gaming and poker regulations. The question now is how aggressively will those bills in the General Assembly be pursued.
