New York allows gambling in casinos but currently does not allow online casino wagering.
New York allows gambling in casinos but currently does not allow online casino wagering.
New York allows gambling in casinos but currently does not allow online casino wagering. They are currently limited to VLTs and electronic table games controlled and owned by New York. When New Yorkers legalized private casinos in 2013, it allowed for up to seven gambling licenses.
New York residents can download and install any online casino gambling apps. However, in order to play for real money they must cross the border into New Jersey, where they can start playing
Online Casino for New York Residents
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Online gambling in New York has yet to be legalized but the market potential is huge, with America’s fourth biggest population also one whose residents have the most disposable income and are most tech savvy.
Unfortunately, there remains opposition to online gambling but Governor Andrew Cuomo has recently stated his desire to legalize NY online gambling. The proposals to lift the current restrictions and open up the marketplace to online operators as has been done in neighbors New Jersey and Pennsylvania would provide much needed tax revenues for the state and in the current climate this is something which has started to appeal to even those opposed to online gambing.
New Yorkers can currently gamble online on Horse Racing and Daily Fantasy Sports via apps such as DraftKings and FanDuel, but their online sports betting comes from trips across the Hudson to New Jersey.
This means that revenues are leaving the state and it was for this reason that a bill was proposed in 2020. It came up short but Cuomo will propose another in 2021 and it may be that online gambling could come to NY in the near future.
Until any bills are passed, all online gambling on either sports or on casino games is illegal in New York. This includes offshore sportsbooks and casinos, who have consistently taken revenues from American gamblers but remain completely unregulated.
Anyone in New York who is looking to gamble is advised to always do so legally either via one of the land based casinos in NY state or via any of the legal online betting apps currently available to Americans. Although these cannot be used in NY and attempts to place bets online will be blocked by the GeoComply software, New Yorkers can still open accounts and make deposits into them, before travelling to a neighboring state to wager.
There are definitely moves afoot to legalize gambling in NY and it would be no surprise if there was a bill passed in 2021 to pave the way for legal NY gambling. The state faces a huge revenue hole following the COVID pandemic and the success of other states in bringing in tax dollars via online gambling is one that offers hope for supporters of legalized gambling in New York.
Cuomo’s proposals for a competitive marketplace for online gambling would, according to analysts, bring in as much as $1 billion per year and it seems impossible that this kind of available revenue would be left on the table. There are suggestions that New York could follow Oregon and introduce a single operator gambling option, however the fact that DFS giants DraftKings and FanDuel already exist and are familiar to New York residents, with the latter having an office base in the state, suggests that a free market may be the path of least resistance. It is also the one which would provide the greatest revenue to the state.
Currently New York residents aged 18 and over can gamble on the state lottery and on horse racing.
Those over 21 can gamble in one of the state’s 33 land based casinos. These are made up of Tribal Casinos, Commercial Casinos and Racinos (Casinos attached to Racetracks).
There are four commercial casinos which offer legal sports betting:
Anyone over the age of 21 can bet legally on sports in any of those four casinos.
There are currently no legal sports betting apps which allow players to bet online in New York. It is not, however, illegal for a NY resident to download a sports or casino app and to play in a state which allows legal online gambling.
As with all other forms of online gambling, poker is not legal in New York. There are some private games and poker games can be played in the NY casinos but the likes of PokerStars is not available in New York. Any online poker sites which accept New York players are illegal and should be avoided.