The Federal Communications Commission released a plan on Tuesday that would roll back net neutrality, a move that will be welcomed by some telecom giants and internet service providers (ISPs), but which could cause serious problems for the online gambling community. The current net neutrality rules, which were put into place by the Obama administration, prohibit ISPs from giving priority to some websites or activities over others, or from blocking access to specific sites due to their content or source. Essentially, the rules dictate that the internet be treated as a public utility, with all the corresponding consumer protections. But…

The New Hampshire online gambling conversations heated up in a big way this year. The positive developments in Pennsylvania may have received all the attention, but another state legislature was also considering an online gambling bill last week: New Hampshire. H 562, a placeholder bill seeking to legalize online gambling in the Granite State, was up for consideration during an Executive Session last week. In a unanimous vote of 23-0, the bill was found “inexpedient to legislate” by the members of the executive session. The vote puts an end to New Hampshire’s web gambling hopes for the remainder of the…

After last week’s frantic activity in the Pennsylvania state legislature, we expected this to happen, but nonetheless, it is a relief that on Monday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed the gambling expansion bill that will, among other things, legalize online gambling, including poker. The Pennsylvania Senate passed HB 271 on Wednesday by a 31-19 vote and the House passed it Thursday morning, 109-72, sending the gambling bill to Governor Wolf’s desk. It was expected he was sign it and he did not disappoint in that regard, announcing at the Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg on Monday that he did…

A long-delayed rewrite of gambling laws to permit online gambling in Mexico are a bad bet to be approved before 2018, according to the head of the country’s gambling industry association. Last week, Miguel Angel Ochoa Sanchez, president of AIEJA, told Mexican media outlet Milenio.com that he didn’t see Mexico’s new Law of Games and Sweepstakes passing in the current legislative session that concludes on August 31, 2018, one month after national elections. Sanchez’s position is a turnaround from comments he made last summer in which he predicted that the law would be approved in 2016. The Mexican legislature’s lower…

Gambling is a fantastically, astonishingly lucrative market, yet online gambling is more or less illegal in the United States, despite the popularity of physical casinos in Vegas and Reno and Atlantic City. Richard Branson opened the high-profile online VirginCasino in 2014, but dealers hit a soft sixteen only for gamers physically in New Jersey. Few industries are this regulated: Donald Trump himself couldn’t get a gambling license in Las Vegas last year. It wasn’t always this way. PokerStars, the largest online gambling venue in the world, gained prominence during the 2000s with hundreds of thousands of players, valuations in the…

Michigan lawmakers will continue discussing the merits of regulating online gambling and casino games over the internet after a lawmaker introduced a new proposal last week. State Rep. Brandt Iden, a Republican, introduced HB 4926 into the House. A bill in the Senate with the same intentions cleared a committee vote earlier this year. The legislative proposals, advertised as consumer protection initiatives, would allow the three commercial casinos in Detroit and the nearly two dozen tribal casinos in the state to offer the games over the web. Internet gaming operations would be taxed at a 15 percent rate. Online gaming…