Pennsylvania is Looking Towards the Internet for Casino and Lottery
Pennsylvania is facing huge deficits, and they could be the first state allowing its casinos and lottery to open online casino to take their games online in order to increase revenue from new and younger players.
The government of the state has a lot of fiscal challenges, this has been made worse due to sluggish tax collections.
The Republican-controlled Legislature is trying to avoid the broad tax increase under the Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is turning over other rocks in a search for alternatives. They have found a lot of ideas for expand the gambling offerings in what is the nation’s second commercial casino state behind Nevada.
The Legislators have put out a number of gambling expansion options that has not been seen anywhere else. said Joe Weinert, who is the executive vice president of the Spectrum Gaming Group, who are based at Atlantic City, as consultants.
One of the leading ideas is to allow the Pennsylvania’s licensed casinos to be able to control the new online gambling sites. Gambling is legal in three states: Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey.
The previous summer the Pennsylvania lawmakers were confident that the legislation would pass and they penned $100 million into the state’s operating revenues to cover the expected licensing fees they had figured the casinos would need to pay for the privilege.
However, the Pennsylvania Lottery is headed for their first annual drop in revenue since the recession, the Wolf’s administration is willing to expand the lottery’s reach into cyberspace for four states, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky and Michigan.
But it isn’t clear how much help the state government will receive if they allow casino and lottery gambling online.
The New Jersey’s online gambling market, took in $18.7 million during the February sales, this is a jump of roughly 25% compared to the same month the previous year. The NCSL said that Michigan Lottery had forecast approximately $60 million for annual sales from the online lottery play.
Pennsylvania’s stakes are high
The State government is currently facing a potential shortfall of almost $3 billion during next summer, this is based on the January projections by the Legislature’s non-partisan analyst, in the Independent Fiscal Office. That’s almost 10% of their approved spending for this year. In the meanwhile approximately 600,000 more Pennsylvanian’s are expected to turn 60 over the coming decade, this is a 20% increase, according to the state’s estimates. This will be a greater strain on the lottery fund that was set up for fund programs for the elderly.
The Casinos are all hungry for new revenue. The Slot-machine revenue, that are the workhorse of the gambling dollar, is showing that it is flattening in an very competitive market.
It must be noted that the passing of any gambling expansion in Pennsylvania is far from assured.
