Loyal readers of our site are certainly aware of the hard situation on the US gambling market. In our last articles we have covered numerous issues connected with online gambling in various US states. Everything have been rather calm for couple months. However, it doesn’t mean that nothing important happens in the US gambling world. In this article we are gonna tell you about the last online gambling developments in several US states.
It’s really hard to give a short and comprehensive description of the US gambling situation. The reason is that practically every US state has its own online gambling laws. Some state governments have positive attitude towards online casinos and sportbets seeing them as a great source of profit. Unfortunately, some other state governments try to do anything to officially prohibit online gambling. Such diametrically opposite points of view can be illustrated on the examples of New Hampshire and North Carolina. Both of these states were severely affected by the world financial crisis. However, while New Hampshire legislators turned to online gambling to solve the problem of budget deficit, North Carolina government makes everything to make gambling illegal.
New Hampshire is experiencing huge financial problems due to the current economic crisis. National Lottery of New Hampshire is able to cover the budget gap, however it also experiences huge losses and slump of popularity. To make National Lottery much more lucrative and appealing for residents, governor decided to transfer this lottery to the online platform. Under this project, a special online casino powered by Intralot will be launched on the 1st of July. Three instant casino games ( New Hampshire Poker, Super Slots, Baseball and Speed Bingo) will be offered for every visitor of this lottery site. You can say: doesn’t this project conflict with the UIGEA Act? It doesn’t in fact. The main principle of this online casino operation is that any financial transactions won’t be executed via any payment processors ( credit/debit cards, e-wallets etc). To obtain access to the National Lottery casino games, a player will have to buy an actual ticket in one of the National Lottery outlets. Once you purchase a ticket you can use an individual code specified on it to receive credits in the online casino in question.
New Hampshire government hopes that establishment of such online casino will bring more than hundred million dollars a year to the state budget. It will cater perfectly to online gamblers without breaking any current US federal gambling laws. The usage of such prepaid cards for gambling in internet cafes is really common in the United States as most other ways of transferring the funds are illegal now. However, some US states don’t find this payment method safe enough. North Carolina is one of them. Legislators of this US state are acting very consistently. First of all, they prohibited all the brick-and-mortar slot machines and video poker machines that used to be installed in various bars, hotels and restaurants. However, this legislation didn’t prohibit online US gambling establishments directly. Then, in the early 2010 North Carolina government imposed a moratorium for a 2 month period that covered all the places with online casino games offered. Pre-paid phone cards were used as the most common method of payment there. You could have bought such a card and transfer the ‘time’ into casino credits. All the winnings in online casino were also possible by crediting time back and exchanging it for cash at e-cafes. Several days ago we received the news that Senate of North Carolina voted to ban such internet establishments claiming that they violate the UIGEA Act. This bill will be heard in the House of Assembly before it will be officially enforced.
