After last week’s frantic activity in the Pennsylvania state legislature, we expected this to happen, but nonetheless, it is a relief that on Monday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed the gambling expansion bill that will, among other things, legalize online gambling, including poker. The Pennsylvania Senate passed HB 271 on Wednesday by a 31-19 vote and the House passed it Thursday morning, 109-72, sending the gambling bill to Governor Wolf’s desk. It was expected he was sign it and he did not disappoint in that regard, announcing at the Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg on Monday that he did…

A long-delayed rewrite of gambling laws to permit online gambling in Mexico are a bad bet to be approved before 2018, according to the head of the country’s gambling industry association. Last week, Miguel Angel Ochoa Sanchez, president of AIEJA, told Mexican media outlet Milenio.com that he didn’t see Mexico’s new Law of Games and Sweepstakes passing in the current legislative session that concludes on August 31, 2018, one month after national elections. Sanchez’s position is a turnaround from comments he made last summer in which he predicted that the law would be approved in 2016. The Mexican legislature’s lower…

Gambling is a fantastically, astonishingly lucrative market, yet online gambling is more or less illegal in the United States, despite the popularity of physical casinos in Vegas and Reno and Atlantic City. Richard Branson opened the high-profile online VirginCasino in 2014, but dealers hit a soft sixteen only for gamers physically in New Jersey. Few industries are this regulated: Donald Trump himself couldn’t get a gambling license in Las Vegas last year. It wasn’t always this way. PokerStars, the largest online gambling venue in the world, gained prominence during the 2000s with hundreds of thousands of players, valuations in the…

Michigan lawmakers will continue discussing the merits of regulating online gambling and casino games over the internet after a lawmaker introduced a new proposal last week. State Rep. Brandt Iden, a Republican, introduced HB 4926 into the House. A bill in the Senate with the same intentions cleared a committee vote earlier this year. The legislative proposals, advertised as consumer protection initiatives, would allow the three commercial casinos in Detroit and the nearly two dozen tribal casinos in the state to offer the games over the web. Internet gaming operations would be taxed at a 15 percent rate. Online gaming…

Golden Nugget owner Tilman Fertitta stood before the Louisiana Riverboat Economic Development and Gaming Task Force on Tuesday to request regulations on casino operators be eased to allow Louisiana to better compete with nearby states. As part of a statewide inquiry for insight from casino operators, Fertita laid out a litany of improvements that the state could make to improve gaming laws and regulations. During his pitch, Tilman said Louisiana shouldn’t limit the number of slot machines on riverboat casinos and at trackside “racinos.” The billionaire also questioned why Louisiana lawmakers continue to mandate non-track casinos be built on water,…

LISTED BELOW IS AN EXCERPT FROM AN EDITORIAL ON PHILLY.COM BY OPPONENTS OF ONLINE GAMBLING.AS LEGISLATION GROWS MORE REALISTIC, THESE PEOPLE WILL PLAY ANY CARD THEY HAVE TO STOP IT. THIS WEEK IN GAMBLING HAS PUBLISHED THIS SO THAT OUR READERS ARE EDUCATED ON THE PROPAGANDA OF THESE PEOPLE. Online gaming in Pennsylvania, currently under consideration in Harrisburg, may cannibalize traditional gaming. Extensive brick-and-mortar cannibalization already happened in New Jersey years back and recent reports suggest land-based casino floors saw a decrease in take in April, 2017 compared with April, 2016. Some data suggest that visit-trips to Atlantic City itself…