Pennsylvania pols prepping kamikaze online gambling bill

If you ever doubted Pennsylvania legislators’ sincerity in their attempts to pass online gambling legislation, your skepticism has been handsomely rewarded.

Tuesday brought a flurry of tweets from GamblingCompliance scribe Chris Krafcik (@CKrafcik) regarding the direction that the Pennsylvania state Senate’s Community, Economic & Recreational Development (CERD) committee is “leaning toward” with regards to intrastate online gambling legislation.

The stupefying sextet of Krafcik tweets began with an ominous warning that Pennsylvania’s already meandering path toward regulated online gambling was “becoming more torturous.” For one thing, Category 3 casinos would be ineligible for online licensing under CERD’s plan, therefore leaving Valley Forge and Lacy Luck Nemacolin on the sidelines.

CERD is reportedly proposing a bifurcated online licensing regime; one for poker-only sites, the other covering casino games. There would be a maximum of 10 available licenses of each type, and each of these would require operators to ante up a $5m fee, putting the state’s total upfront take at a nice round $100m.