Delaware Online Poker Blackout Highlights Failure in Monopoly Regulation – Online poker is legal in eight states but only available in four. The reasons for this include three states empowering their lotteries to run igaming while two states awarded… Right now, online poker is legal in eight US states — but it’s only available in four.
Online poker players in Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are the lucky ones. Their counterparts in Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and West Virginia? Not so much.
Although the reasons vary for why there is no online poker in the latter four states, three of them have something in common — in Delaware, Rhode Island and West Virginia, the regulator in charge of igaming is the state lottery .
The state lotteries in Delaware and Rhode Island awarded an igaming monopoly to a single operator. And in Connecticut, it is a duopoly, with licensing open to just two tribal casinos, which can each partner with a single online provider.
It’s a broken model that needs to be replaced, especially if players and operators alike hope to restore US online poker to its former glory pre-Black Friday, nearly 13 years ago. Indefinite Poker Blackout in Delaware
Online poker in Delaware should serve as a cautionary tale. Ten years after awarding its exclusive igaming contract to 888 Holdings, the Delaware Lottery invited operators to bid on the contract when it came up for renewal last year. Another 10-year term was up for grabs.
There weren’t many takers. In the end, Rush Street Interactive (RSI) won the contract by default when 888 withdrew its bid last May .
RSI continues to work on Run It Once (RIO) poker, the platform it bought in March 2022. Since RIO was still in development last December when RSI took over as the Lottery’s igaming provider, Delawareans lost their ability to play online poker.
It’s unclear how long the blackout period will last.Although RSI has said that it plans to launch online poker in Delaware at some point, the operator is very unlikely to launch RIO in Delaware first. This is because Delaware is a small state […]
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