Casino City's iGaming Pocket Directory - 2016 Edition

Sponsored by 95 Visit iGamingPocketDirectory.com for more information. UNITED STATES The year 2013 will always be a landmark year in American online gaming history. Just as 2006 (the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) and 2011 (Black Friday indictments of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and UB/Absolute Poker) will always be remembered, so will 2013 — because that is the year New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada began regulating intrastate online gambling, or gambling contained by the borders of one state. Gambling that includes wagers that cross state lines (interstate) — with the exceptions of fantasy sports and horse racing — remains illegal. New Jersey, with nearly 9 million residents, is far and away the leader in online gambling in the U.S., with online casinos and poker rooms raking in $145 million in revenues from Dec. 1, 2014 through Nov. 30, 2015, up 21.8% from the same period the previous year. Online casinos in New Jersey must have their servers located in an Atlantic City casino and are permitted to offer any game played in the casino. Like New Jersey, Delaware offers the full suite of casino games online, though there are less than 1 million residents in the state. Because Delaware has such a small population, it pools liquidity for online poker with Nevada, though the agreement doesn’t appear to be making a big difference for either state. Delaware saw its online gambling revenues slip from less than $2.1 million from Dec. 1, 2013 through Nov. 30, 2014 to approximately $1.8 million in the same period last year, a drop of more than 13%. Nevada no longer reports online gambling revenues, as there is just one online poker operator in the state. The market — which includes the 2.6 million residents as well as visitors, who are allowed to play games online when within the state’s borders — is estimated to be about $10 million. The road to permitting intrastate online gambling has been a long and winding one. The chief obstacle to intrastate online gambling has been the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) interpretation of the Wire Act. The Wire Act was enacted in 1961 to prevent bookmakers from accepting sports bets over the telephone. But for years, the DOJ maintained the Wire Act prohibited all forms of Internet gambling, while online gaming proponents maintained it only applied to sports betting. The DOJ’s position prevented the domestic growth of online gaming in the U.S., although jurisdictions outside the U.S. offered real-money play to American residents. But in 2011, the DOJ reversed its long-held position that all forms of online gambling were illegal because they violated the Wire Act. In a letter released on December 23, 2011, the DOJ said the law applied only to sports betting, and intrastate gaming outside of sports betting did not violate the law. Gambling across state borders, say between poker players in California and Nevada, remained illegal, according to the DOJ.