Online Gambling in Delaware
Delaware was the very first state to legalize online gambling in the United States. Now, gamblers can play their favorite games, from Blackjack to Poker, legally and securely, with real money on the interest. There is no need to ever leave home to play Blackjack, Poker, or roulette in Delaware. Though other states made efforts to legalize online gambling for several years, Delaware was the first state to legalize full-fledged online gambling.
Delaware’s Sites
Delaware currently has three sites that run its online gambling webpages: Harrington, Delaware Park, and Dover Downs. The largest operator is Delaware Park. They bring in around 70 percent of online poker incomes. All of the racetracks share the same online poker room. The sales are collected based on the gateway that the players enter the network from.
Other States Enter the Picture
Nevada and New Jersey followed Delaware’s lead, legalizing online gambling, as well. In 2013, Nevada made the jump to approve interactive gaming. But, it is currently limited to online poker in Nevada. In 2013, New Jersey entered the picture. New Jersey has a number of regulations in place to ensure safety and honesty. Every player must go to an Atlantic City casino to register in person. The application is used to verify the player’s financial status, age, and eligibility within New Jersey’s gaming industry. Players who have been banned from land based casinos in New Jersey will not be able to participate in online gambling. Each state tracks players online to ensure that they are currently in the state. The states use geo-location software to determine where or not a player is in state.
States Struggle with Revenue
Officials in all states initially had high hopes for revenue with the advent of online gaming. Unfortunately, since entering online gaming, all states have struggle with measly revenue. The revenue earned has not come close to matching the initial expectations. Since legalizing online gambling, all states have had low online gambling traffic as well as low returns. New Jersey officials had initially hoped that the revenue from online gambling would boost state tax revenues by $180 million in fiscal 2014. By the end of May however, New Jersey had only produced a little over nine million in revenue from online gambling. State officials blamed the low revenue on technology problems and payment processing problems.
Nevada and Delaware which have much smaller populations that New Jersey have collected only modest amounts of revenue from online gambling. In 2014, Delaware officials had counted only $7.5 million in additional tax revenue in fiscal 2014. The startup costs that these states contended with included software design and data servers to host the gambling.
Revenue Continues to Fall During the Beginning of the Fiscal Year
Up until August, there were very tiny revenues from online gambling in Delaware, and the numbers kept decreasing. For instance, until August, the total numbers were down compared to the profits seen during 2014. As a matter of fact, Delaware’s online poker revenue has decreased by 20 percent between 2014 and 2015. Online gambling on the whole is down by 8 percent. Delaware shares a combined poker room with the World Series of Poker in Nevada, but even this has not helped Delaware’s online gambling figures very much at all.
August Brings Change
August brought a significant rise in Delaware’s online gambling totals. This is something that had not occurred in the three months previous to August. August saw an increase in revenue for both online gambling in general as well as for poker. This made August the most prolific month that Delaware has seen this year.
In contrast to the total gaming revenue from July 2015, August’s online gambling revenue increased significantly, by 12%. This brought the total revenue for August to $159,000. The revenue produced by poker was up 10% in August. This figure means that poker represented in the region of $31,200 of Delaware’s total gambling revenue for online gaming.
New Jersey Sees Changes in August, As Well
New Jersey has been showing monthly increases in 2015. Similar to Delaware, New Jersey experienced increases in August. New Jersey’s online poker revenue was up in August five Percent compared to July.
Online Gambling Takes Time to Catch On
Experts argue that it is natural that legal internet gaming would take time to develop. This is an industry that requires consumer education. Online gambling exists in a gray area because it was perceived to be illegal for so long. It is likely that potential gamblers are just a little apprehensive initially, but this will likely decrease as online gambling becomes more known.
What does this all mean?
The overall decrease in revenue does not indicate the end of online gambling. It only means that online operators and regulators need to find different ways of reaching the potential they envisioned in the first place, and in fact, with the recent increases for 2015, it is likely that they are beginning to figure out a way to do just that by solving problems with geolocation technology and payment processing, as these were likely significant contributors to the initial slowdown of online gambling.
