New York Online Sports Betting Achilles Heel?

There’s trouble brewing with New York online sports betting. The activity was finally approved just a few months ago in April. Now, however, the state is trying to squeeze every penny they can out of operators. So much, in fact, that industry insiders fear it just won’t work.

We’re all together again and it’s time for This Week in Gambling! On our last program we spoke about online poker… the week before that we spoke about online casino games… this week we’re talking about online sports betting because, ya know, I like to keep you guessing! This week’s big story is how to sabotage your online sports betting operation before it even gets started. And for that, we only have to look as far as New York state, where they just regulated this shit like three months ago!

New York online sports betting and mobile betting is set to launch before next year’s Super Bowl. And in order to do that they plan to charge operators there a pretty penny in taxes and licensing fees. So much so that some in the industry are now calling New York’s plans “unworkable”. For some perspective on just how outrageous the fees in New York will be let us first take a look at some of the yearly operational costs for online sports betting and three of the most popular states: Pennsylvania, Nevada, and New Jersey… where, as you can see, the fees range from a few hundred thousand dollars all the way up to $10 million! But that $10 million fee in Pennsylvania is a one-time charge… not annually!

New York, however is asking for $25 million right up front! Plus another $5 million just for hosting your website there! That’s $30 million right off the top… and even though the license is good for 10 years that still works out to $3 million a year, just in fees! Then, of course, operators must pay taxes on what they earn. And once again you can clearly see that Pennsylvania’s right out in front at 36%, which sounds awfully high until you hear that New York plans to charge operators in that state a minimum… a MINIMUM of 50% in taxes… maybe more!

Some may call these charges exorbitant. Some may call these charges extortion. New York state calls these charges a “competitive model”, which basically means they are hell-bent on squeezing every dollar out of every operator they possibly can. Look I have no problem with making money. I have no problem with capitalism. And perhaps perhaps the New York online sports betting market will somehow justify these charges. The more likely scenario, however, is that all these fees will simply be passed along from the operators to you… the players. On a positive note, however, New York did say that for every sports betting license sold they will give away a complimentary bucket of lube. So, there’s that.

This week’s game review is based on a classic puzzle game that many of us grew up playing it’s the Rubik’s Cube online slot from our friends at Playtech! A 5 reel game with 25 paylines, a bonus round, bonus spins, and wild and scatter symbols. This game review and hundreds more are available right now on our YouTube channel.

And finally this week, following the death of Sheldon Adelson back in January the Las Vegas Sands wasted no time in plotting a new course of direction. That course was straight toward online gambling, and this week they made a rather interesting announcement. The Sands wants to grow their leadership position in the gaming industry. And as such, they actually said that digital gaming is still very much in the “early stages of development”… which might be true if we were living in 1996. To be fair, however, if you had spent the last 20 plus years working under Sheldon Adelson… well, you may have missed that whole online gambling thing too!