Seven Online Gambling Stories You Can Expect To See In 2021
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It's New Year's Eve. It's a good time to make predictions for the coming year. In the US online gambling industry, the easiest prediction to expect is to be surprised. Here are seven stories you can expect to read within the next 12 months.
Flutter is contesting the historical fine in Kentucky. PokerStars owes the state $870 million plus interest for illegal activities between 2006 and 2011. Flutter's legal team believes there is still a path forward to get the amount of the fine reduced.
WSOP announced plans for summer 2021. The pandemic in the poker world was a major effect of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas over the summer. 85 WSOP bracelets were awarded online. If the series does return in 2021, there will likely be changes both online and off. It's all but guaranteed that the online component will be bigger than ever.
The US Wire Act case continues. Juan Torruella, one of the judges on the case, died. The case is still ongoing. The First Circuit Court of Appeals was supposed to rule on it late this year.
Bally's is a brand that was bought by a company that wants to expand into the online gambling space. It is planning to launch a sports betting vertical in 2021. The company is also planning expansion into other states. It will be interesting to see where Bally’s finds itself in the battle for market share. There are also modern brands like DraftKings and FanDuel that are more popular than Baly's.
BetMGM is the second-biggest licensee in the New Jersey online casino market after Golden Nugget. It has not expanded its iGaming brand to other states yet. Its online casinos launched in West Virginia in August and in Pennsylvania at the beginning of December. The BetM MGM online Casino in Michigan is expected to be one of the first to launch in that state.
Michigan is going to launch its online gambling product in mid-January 2021. The state has legalized all the major verticals. It's not clear how many sites will go live on launch day. It could be like New Jersey with a big synchronized launch or more like Pennsylvania with operators gradually trickling in over the course of the first year.
Illinois and Connecticut are the top two iGaming contenders for 2021. Golden Nugget has already made sure to have its market access lined up. Gov. Ned Lamont has dropped his opposition to online casinos. Alex is a journalist from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. He has been writing about poker and the online gambling industry since 2014. His site runner is OnlinePokerReport.com. The company's focus is to bring legal online poker, casino gaming to new states.
