Managing Editor
The New Year will no doubt see multiple states attempting to legalize online poker, but the odds of success seem longer than ever in the current political context.
This past year has been a contentious one for gambling in general. Online poker has been relatively scandal-free, but lawmakers don’t always split hairs as finely as the rest of us. To many decision-makers, gambling is gambling … and 2025 has been a doozie.
Topping the list of things that will be at the front of everyone’s minds next year is the NBA gambling scandal. Thirty-one people were indicted in October, accused of a conspiracy to rig sports bets and underground poker games. Three of those were important figures in the NBA, creating a national scandal that has sports leagues and their players’ associations on the hotseat.
Meanwhile, state legislators are fighting a battle on multiple fronts against gambling-like products that attempt to skirt their laws. Coming into 2025, sweepstakes casinos and poker rooms were the hot-button topic. However, they’ve been pushed to the back burner — despite multiple state bans — due to the rapid rise of prediction markets.
Compounding this is the fact that the midterm elections are coming up. True, that’s a federal battle, while gambling is a state issue, prediction markets notwithstanding. However, the stakes are high enough that even state-level politicians may be hesitant to advance potentially controversial bills that could hurt their party’s chances at the federal level.
Politics is About Emotion More Than Logic
What’s frustrating to online poker players and the online poker industry is that none of this implicates legal online poker at all. Underground poker games of the sort involved in the NBA scandal don’t have much reason to exist in states with ready access to legal poker rooms. Whether playing online or face-to-face, players are safer in a regulated environment.
Even when it comes to the rigged sports bets, the FBI made it clear that legal sportsbooks were the victims, not parties to the conspiracy. In fact, their reporting of suspicious betting patterns helped in the investigation. It’s likely the case that bet fixing was equally rampant before sports betting became legal outside of Nevada — we just didn’t hear about it because the offshore books don’t report suspicious activity to American authorities.
Likewise, sweepstakes casinos and prediction market sports contracts are products that exist because they substitute for gambling in places that haven’t legalized more conventional options.
It’s up for debate how effective regulated markets are at curbing the worst aspects of unregulated gambling. What’s clear, however, is that none of the current scandal, panic, and legal drama is originating from regulated operators.
And yet, that won’t matter. Legislators follow public sentiment, which is fickle and based on emotional association. There have been numerous stories lately that cast gambling in a negative light. It makes no difference that this gambling isn’t exactly the same as that gambling. There are currently too many negative emotional associations clinging to the concept of gambling in general for it to be politically prudent to advance the idea that we need more of it.
An Industry Divided
The best bet for iGaming legislation in 2026 might be to tie it to a ban on some of these other gambling alternatives. That way, it could be presented as trading an unregulated (or “differently regulated”) product for a regulated one. Unfortunately, many of the states where such an approach would have been most effective — like New York and Maryland — have already cracked down on sweeps. Banning sports prediction contracts is trickier, because there’s an unresolved jurisdictional question there: the operators believe themselves to be financial entities subject only to federal CFTC regulations.
The prediction markets have had a profound effect on the gambling industry, too. DraftKings and FanDuel, which were themselves the disruptors not long ago, had only just begun to make peace with the U.S. brick-and-mortar casino industry. The emergence of prediction markets has driven a wedge into that relationship. While conventional operators like MGM have unequivocally opposed prediction contracts on sports, DraftKings and FanDuel have begun dabbling in predictions as a way of keeping up.
Both companies recently launched prediction products that include sports.
That difference in opinion and strategy forced the two online giants out of the American Gaming Association.
Meanwhile, the retail industry was already divided on whether online gambling is beneficial or harmful to conventional casinos. It is becoming ever harder for the online gambling industry to present a united lobbying front, while its opponents keep finding ways to work together. This year saw the formation of the National Association Against iGaming, aligning the retail industry holdouts with casino workers’ unions and a variety of advocacy groups.
MGM’s Withdrawal From New York
For the effort in New York, MGM’s decision to cancel its bid for a downstate casino resort will also affect things.
It will have less clout than it did when it was expected to make billions of dollars of investment in the state. Meanwhile, the remaining licensees — Hard Rock, Bally’s, and Resorts World — may not be as gung-ho about online casinos as MGM would have been.
New York’s iGaming effort, led by Sen. Joe Addabbo, represented the Holy Grail for online casino operators. However, it now looks further away than ever with MGM’s apparent loss of interest in the market.
An Unfortunate Cart to Be Tied To
On its own, online poker probably isn’t as difficult a sell as the full iGaming package including online poker. Unfortunately, there also isn’t enough money in it for anyone to be interested in a pure online poker bill in this decade. In the states with iGaming, online poker makes up only about 2% of gross revenue.
J. Gary Pretlow, who has been Sen. Addabbo’s counterpart in the Assembly for New York iGaming efforts, has proposed online poker on its own as a compromise. However, those bills have never gained any traction.
There is, perhaps, an alternate universe where online poker advocates attempted to piggyback on sports betting, instead of online casinos. The skill element of both products makes them more palatable to some gambling opponents than online casinos. However, the recency with which legalizing sports betting became an option, and the speed with which it then swept the nation have made that impossible.
There was one such effort in Kentucky. However, online poker got cut from that state’s sports betting bill in 2023 — a necessary sacrifice to get it across the line.
Could we see that happen elsewhere? Hypothetically, it could make sense in California. That state’s gaming tribes are coming around on the issue of sports betting, but cardrooms wouldn’t support any gaming expansion that doesn’t have anything in it for them. Online poker for the cardrooms and sports betting for the tribes is a deal that would make sense on paper. Unfortunately, tensions between the two parties are at an all-time high. It’s hard to imagine either side being willing to compromise.
Even a Small Win for Online Casinos Won’t Mean Much for Poker
If there is some hope for iGaming legislation, it is more likely in small states than big ones. There are fewer moving parts and conflicting interests. That’s a point that I’ve made in the past, and that was borne out when Rhode Island became the only state since 2021 to pass an online casino bill.
For bright spots in the dark context, we could look at perhaps Wyoming or New Hampshire, both of which have been toying with the possibility. The trouble with these is that, even if they legalize online poker, they may not attract any operators. The markets are too small on their own.
To bring online poker to a state with fewer than five million residents requires shared liquidity, for one thing. It also requires an operator that’s interested in the market for other reasons and willing to go to the trouble of including a poker room.
Connecticut, for instance, still doesn’t have any online poker, largely because it hasn’t yet joined the Multistate Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA).
West Virginia, meanwhile, has been party to the compact since 2023, but it took until this year for BetRivers to be the first operator to make the plunge.
New Hampshire’s population is as tiny as West Virginia’s, and Wyoming’s is smaller still. If anyone’s getting online casinos next year, it would be one of those, but online poker would take many years more if it were to come at all.
