9 casinos move to offer gambling online

Nine casinos will each pay $10 million to get the licenses for the new games. The casinos will be allowed to offer virtual slots, virtual poker and other simulated table games online.

The casinos applying for the online games licenses are: Parx in Bensalem, the Mount Airy Casino and Resort in Mount Pocono, the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, Hollywood Casino at Penn National in Grantville, the Valley Forge Casino Resort, Harrah’s Philadelphia Casino & Racetrack, Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, the SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia and the as-yet-unopened Live! Hotel and Casino Philadelphia.

The casinos will compete with the Pennsylvania Lottery, which has been offering its version of online games since May.

Online gambling for both the casinos and the state lottery was legalized in the state’s wide-ranging gambling expansion that was signed by Gov. Tom Wolf last fall.

Gamblers have spent more than $31.3 million on the state lottery’s online games since May 22, said lottery spokesman Gary Miller. Of that, the state has paid out $27.1 million in prizes, he said.

Miller said lottery officials aren’t overly concerned abut the competition from the casinos.

“We feel there is plenty of room in the marketplace for both of us,” he said.

Players can play online lottery games for money after signing up for an account and adding a payment method such as a debit card or linked bank account. Credit cards are not accepted.

Lottery officials say Pennsylvania is now the seventh state to allow its state lottery to offer games over the internet. The other states with online lottery games are: Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Minnesota. Pennsylvania is just the fourth state to allow casinos to offer gambling online. The others are Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The online games are just one of the ways the state moved to expand gambling. The state awarded licenses for five mini-casinos in January through April. The auctions for those licenses generated more than $120 million. The mini-casinos will be located in York, Westmoreland, Lawrence, Cumberland and Lancaster counties.

In addition, the state has moved to legalize sports betting. Applications for casinos interested in taking sports bets were released by the Gaming Control Board last week. Gaming Control Board spokesman Doug Harbach said that no casinos have applied for a sports betting license yet.

“We also have no finalized regulations on sports wagering,” he said. “There is no deadline on sports wagering as there was for iGaming.”