California Online Gambling Bills Hit Dead End

September 12, 2014 by

California Online GamblingDuring the majority of 2014, we have been waiting to see which states would push through legislation to regulate the online gambling industry. Unfortunately, we know one state that won’t be a part of it since a major California online gambling bill died earlier this week. The basic idea is that they aren’t going to have enough time to get it refined enough to get it passed, so it’s effectively on the shelf until next year. This is a major disappointment, and it also contributes to the state’s financial woes as they were hoping to get revenues from this by next year.

Why the California Online Gambling Bills Flopped

There are two bills that could have pushed through Internet gambling in the state. The first, mentioned above, was SB 1366 which had a lot of promise. The other is AB 2291, which does not have as much promise. It’s pretty much been ignored and put on the shelf with no date set for it to even be considered, so all of these beliefs that California would be next to join the states that have regulated the games are out the window for now. It’s really interesting to note that it was thought to be a sure thing by a lot of experts, but politics can be weird sometimes.

What Went Wrong

There are a few major points of disagreement that have kept it from happening. The main thing is that different groups of lawmakers have different ideas about what should be done about operators who have ran games in the state already without any sort of license. Note this includes all operators since licenses aren’t even available.

Some lawmakers want to completely ban them from the state which would obviously hurt the games in a major way by eliminating some of the best software and operators in the industry from competing. Others want to include them like has been done in almost every other major regulatory advancement, including the vast majority of Europe. We’ll have to see what they eventually decide.

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