BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Online sports betting has been legal for some time now. It’s iGaming that has lawmakers trying to figure out how to make money off these popular products.
One is the Stake, the online gambling platform that has celebrity partnerships as high up as Drake himself. State law has not caught up to the digital age of gambling and platforms like these are going unregulated.
Howard Glaser of Light and Wonder Gaming said the current industry puts consumers at risk.
”You can pay for some of this with a MasterCard or a visa,” Glaser said. “You did not approve this but it is happening and is happening throughout the state.”
Lawmakers like Representative Mike Echols are trying to figure out how to capture the nearly $4.6 Billion in untaxed revenue every year.
“They’re predatorially coming after our constituents and allowing them to gamble online,” Echols said. “I don’t think our issue is with our constituents doing something it is with these vendors.”
Many of them are based outside of the United States like El Royale Casino, which is based in the Caribbean. A big push from both the Senate and House committees was to link that possible tax revenue to companies based in the U.S.
”If we consider iGaming, it has to be linked to those land-based facilities because they’ve actually made a physical deposit in Louisiana,” Echols said.
On the other side of the coin, some lawmakers were concerned with the potential risks of legalizing iGaming — especially when it comes to age verification.
Chair of the Louisiana Gaming Control Board, Chris Hebert says it’s a choice between regulated or unregulated risks.
”One thing to travel to a casino and game but it’s another thing to be able to do it from your couch,” Hebert said. “Those present real problems. As regulators that is not lost on us.”
Of the seven states that have legalized this form of gambling, $2 billion has been collected in tax revenue, far outpacing what sports betting brings in for the more than 35 states it is legal in leading state lawmakers to look for ways to tap into these funds.
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