The National Governors Association Economic Development & Commerce Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week explaining that the group is “concerned with legislative or administrative actions that would ban online Internet gaming and Internet lottery sales.” Based on the wording, the impetus for the letter appears to be Sessions’ comments during his confirmation hearing: “I did oppose [the 2011 DOJ opinion] when it happened, and it seemed to me to be unusual,” Sessions said during the hearing. “I would revisit it or make a decision about it based on careful study.” While troubling, Sessions’ remarks aren’t…

This week West Virginia became the seventh state to introduce legislation seeking to legalize and regulate online gambling in 2017. This is West Virginia’s first online gaming bill. The legislation is surprising, but not wholly unexpected. West Virginia was selected as one of Online Poker Report’s “dark horse” states to pass an online gambling bill this year. The bill, H 3067, sponsored by Delegate Shawn Fluharty, would “authorize Internet gambling through managed and licensed through existing authorized gaming facilities in West Virginia.” Per the bill: “Developments in technology and recent legal decisions have created an opportunity to legalize interactive poker…

Cardplayer.com has been speaking to Michigan State Senator Mike Kowall and the online gambling bill creator is confident that the bill will pass by the end of the year. With the focus squarely on proceedings on the online gambling space in Pennsylvania, the state of Michigan has thrown their hat in the ring to be the first state to legalise online gambling since New Jersey way back in 2013. The bill’s creator, Senator Mike Kowall, told Cardplayer.com that there was still ‘plenty of time’ to get the bill underneath the noses of the right people, and firmly believes Michigan residents…

Tennessee became the third state to regulate fantasy sports as an industry when Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill into law on Wednesday. Tennessee joins Indiana and Virginia as state governments that have passed regulations overseeing DFS this year. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey also enacted DFS regulations this year. Tennessee becomes the first state where a negative attorney opinion about the legality of daily fantasy sports was rendered moot by the legislature. AG Herbert Slatery earlier this month opined that operating DFS contests constituted illegal gambling under Tennessee law, previously. Neither DraftKings nor FanDuel had announced that it would…

Indiana became the second state with a law formally legalizing daily fantasy sports after Gov. Mike Pence signed Senate Bill 339 on Thursday. Earlier this month, Virginia became the first state to pass such a law. States have taken vastly different approaches as they try to clarify the murky legality of the games. New York’s attorney general has declared them illegal and the industry’s two largest companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, agreed this week to stop taking bets in the state. In Maryland, a bill would put the question to voters in a November referendum. The Indiana law sets a minimum…

A New Jersey daily fantasy sports bill that a state senator plans to introduced is the strictest attempt to regulate the DFS industry. “We have a draft of a bill that we are circulating to a variety of people, the Division of Gaming Enforcement, the Casino Control Commission, other legislators, as well as people in the fantasy sports industry, to take a look at what might be appropriate for New Jersey to do,” state Senator Jim Whelan told Legal Sports Report in an interview on Wednesday. “Other states obviously are looking at this; we’re not talking about doing anything to ban it or to make it…