Monday July 16th marks the deadline for Pennsylvania casinos to apply for a bundled licensing package to offer online gambling under new state laws. For the fee of $10 million, casinos will be allowed to offer online slots, online poker and online table games.
Three eastern Pennsylvania casinos have already applied for this type of license, and it remains to be seen whether any of the other 13 casinos in all, such as Meadows Racetrack and Casino and Rivers Casino, will apply before Monday.
If casinos choose not to opt for the $10 million online gambling bundle license, they will be able to apply for any of the three separate licenses at a cost of $4 million each. These licenses will cover slots, table games or poker. Naturally, casinos may opt to decline to enter the online gambling market altogether.
Under Pennsylvania’s 2017 gambling expansion law, gamblers will be able to create online accounts and play casino games legally from home or anywhere else, as long as they remain physically within the state’s borders.
Gambling analysts believe that it will be months before all the requirements – both technical and regulatory – will be completed before players can start gambling online. It is also believed that not all casinos would be willing to fork out $10 million for a license, and many would prefer to pick up a separate license after identifying their target markets.
According to one market analyst, quoted in the Post Gazette: “If this were an all-or-nothing deadline, then it would be a critical date. But given the dynamics in which so few may be interested in offering online poker, I don’t know if the number of applications you see by Monday will be an accurate barometer of the market.”
The three casinos that have already made an application are the Parx Casino in Bucks County, the Mount Airy Casino Resort in the Poconos and Stadium Casino LLC. The latter has made an application without yet having a physical address since the casino is still in the process of being built.
