Why Online Gambling is Still Illegal in Most U.S. States

There are currently three states in the USA that allow internet gambling. Two of the three have reported increasing revenues, New Jersey and Delaware, However, Nevada does not report their internet revenue separately.

The hoped for expansion has not happened as many of the states sit on the sidelines assessing the costs and benefits of the industry.

Chris Krafcik, a research director for the Gambling Compliance, that tracks gambling legislation nationwide, said, that the three states missed the initial forecasts which were quite aggressive.

Chris Christie's, the former New Jersey Gov's. administration, initially estimated that Internet gambling would bring in $1 billion in its first year. After the first year the revenue was about 12% of the initial forecast.

Mr Krafcik, said that the negative P.R. resulted from that first year, fair or not, took the wind out of the expansionary sails.

The San Francisco-based Gambling Compliance predicts that either California or Pennsylvania will ne next to approve Internet gambling next year, and that New York and Mississippi will follow in subsequent years.

The internet gambling industry still faced issues and threats such as efforts in congress to ban internet gambling nationwide.

The Restoration of America's Wire Act (RAWA) was introduced into both chamber by Sheldon Adelson this year.

New Jersey began providing Internet gambling on Nov. 25, 2013, and they took in $122 million in their first full year. The first ten months of this year, the Atlantic City casinos have equalled that total with an increase of 17.6% for the same period last year.

Delaware raked in $1.4 million in the fiscal year of 2014; $1.8 million during 2015, and thus far this year $500,000 for the fiscal year, which runs from July through June.

The Nevada Casino's stopped reporting Internet gambling revenue as a separate item at close of 2014. Online poker, which is the only brand of online gambling that is offered by Nevada, is just a drop in the ocean of the state's $11 billion gambling market.

Online poker is one of the most popular forms of Internet gambling, although the relatively small number of states that offer Online poker has kept their prize pools low. New Jersey has sought to find partners with other states that might be legalizing online poker to be able to offer larger, joint prize pools. Once the three states had legalized online gambling, one of the main impediments for people gambling online related to the funding of their accounts. Many of the credit card companies were afraid of running afoul of a law that bans banks from funding illegal Internet bets and they were reluctant to process transactions, however things have changed.

New Jersey reports that MasterCard is has been approving 70% of Internet gambling transactions in the state, and that Visa is approving 62%. PayPal has recently come abroad and is now participating.

The top gambling regulator, David Rubuck, said that from a legal stand point, internet gambling has proven to be totally reliable and transparent.

Current technology is now able to detect where a players is situated, this has now reduced false rejections which was initially a problem

Tom Ballance, the president of Borgata one of Atlantic City's top casinos and a leading online winner said that the market was smaller than many people predicted, but that it is now growing.

Borgata has generated $6 million in earnings from online gambling over the first three quarters of this year, said Mr. Ballance.

He continued that in Atlantic City a profit of $6 million is not easy to come by, and that they will take that any time.