Spin Cycle: Illinois iGaming Action, Washington AG Aggression Highlight Week In Gambling

Welcome to “Spin Cycle,” Casino Reports’ weekly Friday roundup of all things impactful, intriguing, impressive, or idiotic in the gambling industry. Pull up a chair, grab a stack of chips and a glass of your beverage of choice, and take a spin with us through this week’s news cycle …

Online casino again making some Illi-noise

Illinois legislators will again ponder regulating real-money online casino as state Rep. Edgar Gonzalez submitted HB 4797 on Monday. Gonzalez maintained much of the language in the bill he submitted last year to the General Assembly.

HB 3080 received a committee hearing but failed to move further due in large part to the state having the nation’s most extensive video gaming terminal (VGT) network. Illinois has close to 50,000 VGTs statewide spanning 8,900 locations, and they helped generate $955.1 million in state tax revenue and $160 million in local receipts. VGTs were also legalized in the city of Chicago as part of the 2026 budget, but there is no timeline on how quickly terminal operators and bars will be able to launch the machines.

Gonzalez is again proposing a 25% tax rate on adjusted gross revenue for iGaming operators, and there are estimates annual tax revenue could reach $800 million. Each licensed casino and horse racing track would have the ability to tether up to three skins.

One subtle tweak from last year is Gonzalez’s requirement an operator must have its primary server located in Illinois no later than after the first year of operation. Illinois state Sen. Cristina Castro is again expected to submit a companion bill for the upper chamber, having done so last year and in 2023.

The proposed legislation will again face stern opposition from the Illinois Licensed Beverage Association, but the Illinois Gaming Board provided some help Thursday. Administrator Marcus Fruchter announced the gaming board, in conjunction with the state attorney general’s office, sent out more than 60 cease-and-desist letters to unlicensed iCasino operators and online sweepstakes operators. Many notable sweeps platforms were on the receiving end of those letters, including High 5 Casino, Luckyland Slots, Modo, Stake, and WOW Vegas.

“Illegal online gambling operations threaten consumer protections, undermine responsible gaming safeguards, and are antithetical to the public’s interest in regulated gaming,” Fruchter said. “The IGB will continue to evaluate all available regulatory and law enforcement tools to combat illegal gambling and to protect Illinoisans.”

— Chris Altruda

Big Fish hunting

While the Seattle Seahawks are finalizing their preparations for this Sunday’s Super Bowl, the attorney general in their home state is taking the field on offense, filing a new lawsuit Tuesday against Playtika, Aristocrat, and several other companies that Washington AG Nick Brown says are operating unlicensed casino apps in the state.

The suit says more than 150,000 Washingtonians gamble each month on apps including Caesar’s Casino Slots, World Series of Poker, and Big Fish Casino, and “While Defendants’ Casino Apps are free to download and access, Defendants make enormous sums of money from players making in-app purchases of coins, chips, and/or credits to gamble with,” Brown’s suit alleges.

“These companies repeatedly violated Washington law, engaged in deceptive practices, and fleeced Washingtonians out of hundreds of millions of dollars,” Brown said in a press release. “It is especially troubling to see gambling apps targeting children.”

The attorney general — who, fun fact, competed on the second season of Survivor some 25 years ago — is seeking to halt access to the casino games and recover all the money citizens of the state have lost playing them.

This sort of legal action is nothing new in Washington state, one of the first jurisdictions to see social/sweepstakes casinos targeted in court.

A poker-news-a-palozza

There was a steady flow this week of poker-related news worthy of a sentence or two in Spin Cycle, so here goes. We’ll deal five cards face-up:

• Phil Hellmuth, owner of a record 17 World Series of Poker bracelets, recently purchased the Las Vegas condo belonging to Elaine Wynn, the late wife of Steve Wynn and co-founder of Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts, for a reported $2.8 million (about 5% below the original $2.95 million asking price). The four-bedroom, five-bathroom apartment is in Park Towers at Hughes Center, just off the Strip.
• Congrats to veteran Canadian poker pro Mike “Timex” McDonald, who won the Cayman Islands National Chess Championship last weekend. Apparently McDonald is great at both games of partial skill and pure skill.
• Congratulations go out as well to one-time WSOP bracelet winner and former Survivor contestant Jean-Robert Bellande, who managed to outwit, outplay, and outlast a field of 50 players to cash for $1.5 million over the weekend in the $100,000 “High Roller” tournament in the Oynx High Roller series at Merit Royal Diamond Casino & Spa in Cyprus. Bellande won heads-up against Rob Yong — the tournament founder who, it just so happened, bought “JRB” into the tournament.
• You may have heard about eccentric poker pro Dan “Jungleman” Cates engaging in an exhibition boxing match on Jan. 22, and you may have heard it was ruled a no-contest as Ryan “Elf” Noel TKO’d Cates with what was deemed to be an illegal cheap shot. Well, the punch has since been ruled legal, and the result changed to a loss for Jungleman. (Which doesn’t really matter because it was an exhibition … but it matters to those who bet on the fight.)
• Bad beat jackpot alert! At Hustler Casino in California on Tuesday, a player holding 5-6 of diamonds made a straight flush on a board that included the 7, 8, and 9 of diamonds, only to lose to an opponent dealt the J-10 of diamonds — triggering the casino’s $100,000 bad beat jackpot. The loser of the hand collected $40,000 of that, the winner $20,000, and the other six players at the table split the rest. Not bad for a $2/$5 cash game hand with about $300 in the pot.

House Rules: Insights from around our network

GOING DOWN UNDER: VGW CEO and owner Escalante arrested in Australia [by Chris Altruda]

KIDS TODAY: Common Sense Media study on gambling lacks common sense [by Jeff Edelstein]

THE LION ROARS: BetMGM reports record Fiscal Year 2025 [by Brant James]

MAINE EVENT: ‘It’s an aggressive approach’: Closer look at iGaming lawsuit accusing Maine of ‘race-based monopoly’ [by Eric Raskin]

HEY, BIG SPENDER: Pennsylvania study: Small number of gamblers driving online casino records [by Jeff Edelstein]

A HOUSE DIVIDED: Maryland House committee appears split on potential sweepstakes ban [by Jill R. Dorson]

INCHING AHEAD: Virginia internet casino bill through first Assembly subcommittee [by Chris Altruda]

COIN IN: DraftKings to allow cryptocurrency conversion for funding sports betting [by Brant James]

ROLL TIDE?: Alabama to try again to legalize casinos, lottery, sports betting [by Jeff Edelstein]

THREE STORIES HIGH: Dealing keno stoned, truckers with firepower, sending Stupak a message [by Richard Schuetz]

SEARCHING FOR A SOLUTION: Can the gaming industry find a way to get sports event contract ban on Congress’ agenda? [by Daniel O’Boyle]

SUPPORT THE TROOPS: DoD appropriations for military gambling addiction study is major milestone [by Jill R. Dorson]

CREATIVE MARKET-ING: People waited five hours for dystopia and free groceries from Kalshi [by Jeff Edelstein]

WHILE YOU WERE SWEEPING: Manning’s anti-sweeps bill passes in Indiana House [by Chris Altruda]

Small stakes and hot takes

This week on the Casino Reports podcast Low Rollers, I welcomed tech entrepreneur Sam Jones, the founder of 155.io, to talk about his new game Rush Hour and the concept behind it, his eye-catching ideas for betting on activities like live marble races, his thoughts from an innovator’s perspective on the prediction market phenomenon, and more.

I also offered my thoughts on the rise of “mention markets” and how they add to (or subtract from) the Super Bowl betting experience, plus I give my initial review of the highly volatile new online slots game Huff N Puff Highrise.

Full episode:

The Shuffle: Other news and views

SHINING STAR: Hard Rock plots $850M hospitality project in Puerto Rico [Hotel Dive]

NOT OK: Multiple SW Oklahoma casinos sent bomb threats, no suspect identified [News 9]

GREEN GARDEN: Greentube strengthens U.S. presence with PlayStar in New Jersey [SBC Americas]

CLIFF’S EDGE: Las Vegas casino vet Cliff Atkinson named CEO of Fremont Street Experience [CDC Gaming]

CALI CLASH CONTINUES: Tribes express serious concern over Vallejo casino [MSN]

ALL YOU CAN EAT: Gone are the days of the $1 buffet in Las Vegas, now $175 buffets offer luxury dining [Associated Press]

IOWA BUTTING IN: House subcommittee votes to end smoking in casinos and ‘level the playing field’ [Iowa Capital Dispatch]

HOLD YOUR HORSES: New Mexico tribes say proposed racino move to Texas line threatens gaming dollars [Santa Fe New Mexican]

CAROLINA EFFORT GOES SOUTH: Statehouse bill allowing casinos in SC seemingly dead after brief hope of revival [Palmetto Politics]

IF YOU BUILD IT … : Will new casino be a jackpot for Norfolk? [Virginia Business]

The Bonus Round

Completing the Spin Cycle with some odds and ends and our favorite social media posts of the week.

Deadline reported some fun Hollywood news on Monday, revealing that Sylvester Stallone’s production company is working on a series adaptation (network or streamer TBD) of Doug J. Swanson’s 2014 book, Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker. Cole Hauser — currently on Yellowstone, but I’ll always think of him as one of Will Hunting’s buddies — will star as the patriarch of the Binion family.

Do you like jackpots? Of course you do. Let me rephrase that: Do you like reading about other people winning jackpots? Maybe not … but too bad. BetMGM shared the news this week that five players in Michigan won online progressive jackpots in excess of $400,000 in a span of five days, from Jan. 26-30. And separately, CDC Gamingreported Wednesday that a guest at The Rose Gaming Resort in Virginia won what is believed to be the largest historical horse racing jackpot ever in the U.S. on Jan. 22, capturing a $1,014,879 score on a 25-cent wager.