Eye On Illinois: Gambling expansion a Prairie State inevitability

Fifty years in the past, you couldn’t purchase a lottery ticket in Illinois. Or anyplace, for that matter.

Thirty-two years in the past, Illinois didn’t have a single riverboat on line casino, and 24 years in the past you couldn’t wager until the boat was shifting.

Ten Septembers in the past, video video games switched from “for amusement solely” to precise playing terminals.

Illinois’ first legalized sports activities bets have been positioned in March 2020.

That half century of accelerating acceptance of legalized wagering – and heat embrace of the attendant income advantages – in all probability isn’t shocking to these conversant in how shortly we went from Al Capone’s bootlegging days to in style taverns in almost each ZIP code. Or the quick evolution from Nancy Reagan’s first “Simply say no” in 1984 to the authorized, leisure pot gross sales being a billion-dollar business in Illinois.

All of which is to say there’s no good cause to low cost the weekend Related Press report about future playing growth in Illinois: on-line on line casino video games.

The information got here out of the East Coast Gaming Congress, the place on-line playing executives and know-how companions mentioned states which have already launched sports activities playing have the regulatory and infrastructure to tackle one more market.

Illinois could be enjoying catch-up to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, Delaware and Connecticut, and convention panelists mentioned Indiana, Iowa and New York are positioned equally.

Citing the American Gaming Affiliation, The AP reported New Jersey’s on-line casinos have taken in $4.79 billion over the previous 9 years. Pennsylvania opened for enterprise in July 2019, yielding $2.47 billion. Michigan experiences $2 billion for the reason that begin of 2021.

A lot of these figures make authorities price range officers swoon. The price of working the state at all times goes up whereas the general public’s urge for food for paying gross sales, property and earnings tax strikes onerous the wrong way.

That Illinois has already demonstrated a willingness to maneuver away from a legacy of horse tracks and brick-and-mortar casinos to chase the following income excessive is all of the extra cause to presume this development is a matter of when, not if.

The principle drama would appear to be whether or not present Illinois playing purveyors’ push to increase their attain into the net would possibly run up towards the ultimate lengths of longstanding efforts to open a bodily on line casino in Chicago. Now that Bally’s has received the Metropolis Council’s approval for a $1.7-billion River West complicated, the trouble is nearer to the end line than as soon as thought attainable, however nonetheless not an absolute certainty.

Predicting playing will proceed to develop in Illinois is like saying the solar will rise within the east, the Bears will strive construct a suburban stadium and politicians will run afoul of federal investigators. Lengthy-time Illinois residents know some issues are simply certainties.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state authorities points for Shaw Media. Comply with him on Twitter @sth749. He will be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.