A new bill has been proposed in Massachusetts to update the state’s sports betting industry, and legislators are also considering legalizing online gaming and poker.
Efforts to legalize online gaming and poker have already been introduced in both the house and the senate and allow the state’s casinos to be licensees (listed as Category 1 license holders for two skins as well as separate branding for online poker). Category 2 licensees (companies currently without a gaming license) could also receive up to four licenses total after paying a $5 million fee for five years.
The tax rate would be set at 20% and the bills allow the state to join the Multi-State Internet Gaming Association, potentially adding a state of seven million people to the country’s shared player online poker pool. Whether the issue receives a vote in both houses remains to be seen.
“Realistically, the process to pass iGaming could take a few years,” Rep. David K. Muradian Jr. recently told PlayUSA. “We did casinos, we did sports wagering, we did iLottery. The logical progression is to look at how we can potentially legalize iGaming, especially when our neighboring states of Connecticut and Rhode Island are already doing it.”
The sports betting bill, SD 1657, would ban prop and in-play betting, bar ads during televised sporting events, and raise the tax rate to 51%.
The bill also prohibits bettors “from placing wagers with an operator of more than $1,000 per day or $10,000 per month without said operator having conducted an affordability assessment of said person and determining that the daily or monthly amounts wagered do not exceed 15 percent of the amount said person has available in a bank account.”
Another bill, SD 2428, filed in the state senate by Sen. Jacob Oliveira (D) would also ban wagering on elections. If approved, the plan would go into effect immediately as an emergency law. Federal officials have also recently made an effort to ban the practice on the federal front after billions of dollars were wagered on the 2024 elections.