[Image and article content provided by Where Y'at Magazine Staff]

Will Louisiana Government Ever Consider Online Gambling Regulation?

00:55 October 28, 2017
By: Staff

Louisiana has played an important role in the spread of organized gambling in the United States. It was the entry point of popular casino games like blackjack and roulette to the New World, and its riverboats were the means of spreading them to other parts of the country. With such an important role in the gambling industry's birth in the United States, it might be surprising that Louisiana had such a harsh anti-gambling legislation in the past. For almost a century, there was no state lottery, and gambling only became regulated in the early 1990s. Even today, its residents are not only discouraged from gambling at online venues like 7Sultans, but they are explicitly banned from doing so. Those caught playing the real-money casino gaming on sites like 7Sultans will be fined for doing so. All this while many other states in the U.S. consider online gambling as a way to supplement their budgets.

What happens in other states?

After the U.S. Department of Justice issued an opinion that individual states have the right to decide for themselves whether they want to regulate or ban online gambling, a handful of states—namely Delaware, Nevada, and New Jersey—have acted on their newfound freedom. Nevada and Delaware decided to regulate online poker, while New Jersey went the whole nine yards, legalizing online casinos as well. The latter seems to be the better approach, at least when it comes to revenues for the state: according to some reports, online casinos have contributed at least half a billion dollars to the state's budget since the opening of the first online casinos in 2013.

As a result, more states are now considering online gambling regulation. But their task is not easy. They have quite a few stakeholders to satisfy, including land-based gambling venues, poker rooms, tribal casinos, and so on. This can make it hard to create legal initiatives—California, for example, has been struggling for years to find a way to bring all its stakeholders to the table on the matter of online poker. But initiatives keep flowing. States like Illinois, Pennsylvania, and a handful of others have recently made real progress on the matter of online gambling.

Why would anyone want online casinos?

Because they are convenient, accessible, and cheaper than a land-based alternative. Studies have shown that online casinos offer players a far more casual experience than land-based ones, similar to the one that social casino apps—insanely successful in the U.S.—do. And separate studies have also shown that online gambling doesn't contribute to the growth of problem gambling in the areas where it's available either, probably because of its casual nature.

 

 

 

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