So the first jurisdiction in the United States to regulate online gambling is… the District of Columbia. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? It kind of snuck up on us as we were focusing on New Jersey, California, Florida, Nevada and other states.

Even when the D.C. Council passed legislation in their budget bill last year allowing the lottery to offer online poker, it seemed like a long shot. The federal government had the ability to block implementation of the bill, and since the feds in D.C. oppose online gambling, most people speculated that Congress would vote to block the bill.

In Washington, D.C., because of its unique situation as a federal district, all bills passed by the D.C. Council have to be approved by Congress. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives get 30 days to approve or strike down the bill. If at the end of that 30-day term, they do nothing, the bill is considered approved and goes into law in the District of Columbia.

That 30-day deadline passed at midnight on Thursday. Therefore, the measure takes effect. The bill in question allows the D.C. Lottery to run an online poker website. The website could only be accessed by residents of the District of Columbia, so instead of an intrastate online gambling market, it will be an intra-district market. That makes it a rather small market and no one can guess how successful it will be, but Councilmember Michael Brown, who proposed the bill, predicts that it will generate $13 million for the district over the first three years.

The bill allow the lottery to offer online poker, but the regulatory framework is not yet established and, obviously, the website is not up and running. Experts predict the new online poker market to go into effect in 2012.

Tags: gambling regulation, lottery, Washington D.C. online gambling

This entry was posted on Friday, April 8th, 2011 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.