Nevada Online Gambling Licences Only For Major Hotels

Despite Nevada signing its online gambling bill last month, the real beneficiaries of the new laws are the big resort hotels. After all, Nevada state regulators can only grant its licenses to resort hotel and casino operators, who subsequently allow tech companies to partner with them and provide their online gambling interface.
The legal definition of a resort hotel requires the establishment to have 200 or more rooms, a 24-7 restaurant, a bar and a casino area. Only such businesses can then acquire the $500,000 licenses required to operate online with arguments for the strict regulations including only using trusted, experienced brand casinos to establish a credible standard in the new online gambling market.
Unsurprisingly, not everyone is happy with Nevada’s regulations which have been seen as squeezing out small gamers from the new online gambling opportunity. Commenting on the restrictive practices, Geoffrey Lawrence from the Nevada Policy Research Institute (NPRI), explained: “It would have been ridiculous if government restrictions prohibited the entrepreneurs who founded eBay from doing so unless they first constructed physical department stores. The entire premise of the Internet is that this physical space isn’t necessary and that the most innovative entrepreneurs can succeed.”
So far, there have been more than 20 applications for online gambling licenses, with the first online wager in Nevada expected to be just a couple of months away. Nevada has also approved intrastate gambling, opening the opportunity for the state of just 2,758,931 residents to share their player pool with other US states. According to A.G. Burnett from the Nevada Gaming Control Board, this could create a a potential online gambling market worth $4 billion to $10 billion each year.