Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Part of United States
Pennsylvania is one of the largest American online casino markets and by some distance the most heavily taxed, which makes it the natural test of how much tax a licensed market can carry. It has been live since July 2019 under Act 42 of 2017, with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board licensing online slots, table games and poker alongside online sports wagering. The defining feature is the rate. Online slots are taxed at 54% of gross gaming revenue, the highest slot rate in the country, while table games and poker are taxed at 16%. That gap is not a rounding difference; it is a deliberate policy that prices the highest-yielding product at more than three times the rate of the others, and operators structure their promotional spend around it. The instructive part is that the market grew anyway. Pennsylvania sits alongside New Jersey and Michigan in a group accounting for close to 90% of national iGaming revenue, despite a rate that most operators argued in advance would make the market unviable. That is the argument the industry has to answer whenever another state proposes a high rate, and it is why Pennsylvania is cited in every American gaming tax debate. The counter-argument, that a high rate suppresses reinvestment and competition rather than revenue, is harder to see in headline numbers.
Act 42 of 2017 (interactive gaming expansion)
The 54% slots tax shapes operator economics and product mix in Pennsylvania and is the number other high-tax proposals are measured against. Watch iGaming revenue growth against that tax drag and the durability of the multi-operator market.
AR150, prompted by the personalised Bryce Harper message sent to a customer who says he lost $1.5m, cleared the Assembly gaming committee unanimously along with a bill that makes self-excluded players watch counselling videos before they can return.
The Supreme Court's 120-day stay runs out on 13 October, no legislative fix has arrived, and the State Police have told an estimated 70,000 machines' hosts that unplugging them is not enough.
The company has gone to federal court in Ohio, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Washington, asking each to rule that state gambling law cannot reach a CFTC-regulated contract. It is the first prediction-market operator to sue pre-emptively across a whole group of states rather than wait to be sued.
Told by regulators in Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania that it could not offer both, Underdog has chosen its CFTC-registered event contracts over the draft games that built the company. Drafts close in those states on Wednesday evening, after the NFL season kicks off.
Fanatics Sports & Casino merges three products into a single account and one FanCash balance. The prediction markets side reaches states where the sportsbook cannot go.
The Ringer founder said on his own podcast that he gave his sportsbook login to his daughter's boyfriend. Massachusetts requires operators to log every IP address an account is accessed from, and it still took a podcast.
FanDuel, DraftKings and Caesars all walked away from the category this year and it sat vacant through the summer. Fanatics has taken it on a non-exclusive deal, and the reason the others left has not gone anywhere.
Twelve of Missouri's 13 licensed casinos posted year-over-year gains in July, with slots and table games both growing, though the state has no online casino channel to amplify the trend the way neighbouring markets have.
Entain has published its interim results for the first half of 2025, with the FTSE-listed operator pointing to momentum in its UK and Irish retail business and continued progress at its BetMGM joint venture in the United States. The results arrive at a sensitive moment for the group, which is navigating a shifting UK regulatory landscape and a period of strategic repositioning following several years of turbulence.
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Casino Reports