It has been five years since New Jersey launched its legal online poker industry but this has had little impact on the country’s poker scene as a whole. However, many more states have been working towards legalizing online poker and Pennsylvania happens to be one of them. The state’s poker industry is expected to act as game-changer that will give a meaningful boost to the United States poker market. Hopefully, by the end of the year, Pennsylvania will be the fourth state to offer legal online gambling in the wake of a legislation that was passed in October 2017.
Expanded gaming in Pennsylvania has been moving steadily forward indicating that online gambling may debut in the state as early as this fall. Along with New York’s yet to be launched online poker operations, Pennsylvania’s online poker industry is seen as a sort of panacea for the future of online gaming in the US. This might seem rather odd as it was expected that more states would join the push for online gaming in the past couple years in the wake of the launch of New Jersey online poker industry.
Pennsylvania Cannot Rely on the NJ Online Casino Model
Not many states have legalized online poker and the ones that have been making moves towards legalizing, such as New York, have had a plethora of setbacks. Meanwhile, the New Jersey online poker revenue has been rather disappointing something that the state has tried to fix by sharing poker liquidity with Nevada. This is probably a great move by New Jersey but it will probably not be the cure-all that it really needs.
What Are The Options?
Compared to what offshore poker rooms have to offer, players in New Jersey have relatively more limited options to select from in the largest population base state. Also, online poker in both Delaware and Nevada is not as vibrant as expected. As such, a potential solution would be to co-mingle the population bases and poker games with New Jersey as they welcome Pennsylvania.
The ultimate goal here would be the creation of multistate poker by Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware then adding Pennsylvania to the mix. This might actually culminate in a win-win scenario that will eventually contribute the much-needed boost and create a more interesting product.
It is very likely that no other state will have as many pure gaming opportunities as Pennsylvania by late 2018 or early 2019. In addition to the decent number of mini-casinos that are on the way, there will be gambling in airports, truck stops as well as online slots and table games.