In May 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States has stricken down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) of 1992. This is after New Jersey challenged the PASPA so that they can regulate their local sports betting industry.
With the decision of the Supreme Court, each state in the US can now decide on their own about legalizing the operations of local sports betting. In fact, it didn’t take long before a few states made a move towards legalizing it locally.
Local operations of sports betting have been federally illegal in the US. However, there really are now laws that do not allow Americans to wager on sports. They won’t get in trouble for it as long as they place bets on a sports betting site or online casinos that are based outside the US.
This has been a practice for most Americans before the PASPA of 1992 was found unconstitutional and many states are simply watching potential sports betting revenues go to other countries.
One of the first few states that decided on legalizing sports wagering in New Jersey. It only took about a month for this state to legalize betting. The Supreme Court’s decision happened in May 2018 and New Jersey already kicked sports betting of as early as June 2018. It took until August of that same year when online sports betting was made available to the locals.
Speaking of online sports betting, it is noteworthy that not all states that have already decided on legalizing it and have already launched betting allow wagering online. States like New York already launched local sports betting, but online or mobile betting is still not an option for the New Yorkers. NY punters will still have to go to a local casino to be able to place their bets.
Surely, this is something that NY punters are not happy about. Casinos that accept bets on sports are all upstate and some punters just don’t have the time to go there and place their bets. New York already sees the need for mobile betting, but sources are saying that its legalization may take a while because a section of New York’s constitution is still quite a hindrance to making it happen. It’s possible that it may still take a year or two before mobile betting will be available in the big apple.
Currently, there are already 19 states that have already signed a bill that allows the operation of local sports betting within their territories. However, not all of these states have already launched betting.
Illinois, in particular, seems to be takin the time to launch it. The Illinois state government already signed the allowing of sports betting into law since June of last year, but until now, it still hasn’t gone live yet.
In September, the state of Illinois asked its locals about the move of local sports betting and many expressed that they are becoming a bit impatient about its launch. Compared to how other states rolled this out, Illinois is surely taking its time.
The most recent update is that applications for the licenses that the state will issue were already released in December of last year. There are no updates yet as to which operators will be issued licenses, but what’s known is that bookie giants like DrafKings will have to wait for 18 months after the launch of Illinois’ local sports betting before they can accept bets from this state’s residents.
The 18 months was found necessary to give way to the local bookies and casinos before the giants step in. Sources are saying that Illinois is likely to launch sports betting in the middle of this year. It’s still possible that they’d launch it in the first quarter of 2020, but it’s a bit hard to predict.
Meanwhile, Michigan is the most recent state that has signed sports betting into law. The information of the signed operators was also already released a few days ago. PointsBet has been successful in securing a license from Michigan. It is, so far, looking good as PointsBet has already secured access to 10 states.
States like South Dakota, Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina now have pending legislation regarding betting and it is likely that these states will eventually decide of legalizing it locally. Meanwhile, states like Utah, Wyoming, and New Delhi are known to still have no actions regarding this. In fact, the state of Utah may not even legalize sports betting at all.