Gambling Attorney: Maryland Online Casino Legalization Complicated On Multiple Fronts

Maryland’s legislative slog toward potentially legalizing online casino is likely being slowed by the same sentiments that have made the state’s fight against unregulated sites so vigorous, attorney Abbey Block said on Friday at the Morgan State Data Analytics and Sports Gaming Research (DASGR) Town Hall.

Block, of the Ifrah Law firm that litigates gambling cases nationally, said stigma could be a key factor, even as the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates debated separate bills this session.

Even with sports betting, horse racing, and retail casinos legal in Maryland, online casino play is viewed differently, Block said.

“Sports wagering is ultimately event-centric. It’s about the baseball game. It’s about the football game that you could take your family to, or gather around the TV and watch, versus casino games, [which] kind of, for whatever reason, are seen differently,” she explained. “They’re seen as something that comes down to this sense of morality. We see going to a casino as potentially less savory, I would say, than going to a football game with your family. So I think there’s just sort of this overall sense of morality that allows folks to, in their minds, distinguish between one or the other.”

There’s also, Block added, an availability issue, with online casino play constantly on-demand, as opposed to rely on sports events to be taking place.

“They’re not available 24-7, whereas iGaming potentially could be,” she noted. “You could log on, play slots for hours on end. So I think that also implicates concerns about problem gambling that are, I think, a driving factor in why folks are a little bit reluctant to pass iGaming.”

Maryland Del. Vanessa Atterbeary and Sen. Ron Watson each brought iGaming bills to their respective floors for debate this session, but each essentially perished when Gov. Wes Moore announced other means to plug a $3.3 billion budget hole. Meanwhile, state regulators pivoted to the defense, issuing more than 75 cease-and-desist orders to sweepstakes casinos. An iGaming bill has failed in Maryland each session since 2023.

Guardrails, consumer protection

The ability to monitor and manage excessive or potentially damaging play habits could become an argument for legalization. A legalized industry would be beholden to state regulation, where unregulated sites would have no such rules.

“I think that’s a big argument for the legalization of iGaming,” Block said. “The fact that if we regulate it, we have the ability to put guardrails and controls in place. We can implement AI to monitor the patterns of someone who’s playing on a platform and say, ‘Listen, you’ve been on here for six hours. You’ve spent this much money.’ We put up a pop-up window and say, ‘We think it’s time to log off.’

“It’s an argument of why we think regulation is better than just not allowing it at all, because folks are going to gamble. There are offshore platforms that allow people to engage in these games without the authorization of the state, and there’s no guardrails there. So the idea is that if the state regulates it, we have, again, more control over it and more guardrails.”

Maryland holds Old Line vs. sweepstakes casinos

Maryland’s bill proposals were potentially different than some nationally in that they would ban any gambling activity — either skill or chance — that was not specifically codified as legal. This would, in theory, provide a strong firewall against sweepstakes casinos and offshore varieties.

“Looking at these platforms, and from [regulators’] perspective, they say, ‘This looks like gambling, it smells like gambling to me, it’s gambling,'” Block said. “And on the other side of the aisle, these sweepstakes companies are saying, ‘No, no, no, let me tell you about this dual-currency framework and why the elements of gambling aren’t present. Let us explain.’

“And the regulators just aren’t necessarily persuaded by that. I think, again, the regulators see gambling as something that is still within the state’s purview, but anything that is not explicitly permitted by the state is seen as unlawful. So the fact that these companies are operating outside of the existing framework to them is a red light.”