Legal Developments

Sports Betting was once the exclusive domain of Nevada, but the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in May 2018 by the Supreme Court ushered in a new era of US sports betting. And a lot has changed.

A new effort is afoot to remove barriers preventing federally recognized tribes from offering online gambling products. According to the title of the new bill, HR 4308, it seeks “to remove Federal barriers regarding the offering of mobile wager son Indian lands when the applicable State and Indian Tribe have reached an agreement.”  

With legal sports betting spreading across the country, a federal excise tax placed on legal sports wagers in the 1950s could be going by the wayside. The quarter-percent “handle tax” on legal sports wagers (and 2% on illegal wagers) was initially enacted “to facilitate the enforcement of state criminal laws against gambling.”

Editor update: The North Dakota Senate voted unanimously to fail the North Dakota online poker legislation effort described in this post. We will continue to follow future efforts to legalize online poker in ND as they develop. US online poker scored another small victory earlier this week as the North Dakota House of Representatives passed…

A new and somewhat surprising candidate to be Pennsylvania’s second legal online poker room has emerged, GGPoker. As first reported by PokerFuse.com, NSUS Group, Inc., the parent company of GGPoker, previously applied to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) for an online gambling license. The application was approved on Wednesday, granting them an Interactive Gaming…

The Wire Act has long been a thorn in the side of legal, regulated online gambling advocates. That thorn may have finally been removed by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld a lower court’s decision that the Wire Act only applies to sports betting, not other forms of online gambling.

Another level of resonance to the apparent symbiosis between day trading and sports betting was added after financial regulators in Massachusetts alleged that Robinhood failed to protect novice investors. The 23-page complaint from the office of Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin claimed the popular day-trading app allowed investors to take “unnecessary risks.”

On Monday, FanDuel Group announced plans to make “a multi-million-dollar” investment into Fairmount Park Racetrack in Collinsville, Illinois. In a press release, FanDuel Group said its plans include revitalizing the track, introducing new horse racing events, constructing a retail sportsbook at the track, and rebranding the venue as FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing.

For decades, the NCAA and the four major US professional sports leagues fought tooth and nail to maintain the status quo when it came to US sports betting. The main argument employed was the expansion of sports betting in the US would harm sports integrity.

The National Council of Legislators from Gaming States (NCLGS) will have a new president and a new focus in the not too distant future. Nevada State Sen. Keith Pickard, the incoming President of NCLGS, “is leading an effort to expand the national organization’s reputation as the primary source of best practices in gaming law and…