May 18, 2018 4 min read

By the time the Pittsburgh Steelers kick off the 2018 season Sept. 9, residents of Pennsylvania might be able to go to a local casino, or go on the internet, to place a bet on the Black and Gold.

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday opened up a whole new world of legal wagering when it struck down, by a 6-3 vote, a 26-year-old federal law that had banned sports betting in all but a handful of states, most notably Nevada.

Other considerations aside, it was the correct decision. It’s clearly improper to have a law that allows a few states to reap the financial benefits of such betting while barring all the others from taking part.

But what does this ruling mean for states such as Pennsylvania where sports gambling had been verboten?

For once, our state lawmakers were looking ahead, correctly predicting the law would be struck down, and including sports betting in a gambling expansion bill approved last year.

New Jersey, which brought the case decided by the Supreme Court, expects to have sports betting up and running by the end of this month. Pennsylvania won’t be able to move that quickly, because the state Gaming Control Board has yet to put in place regulations to cover such wagering at the state’s existing casinos.

It’s safe to say the folks who run the casinos are looking forward to this new revenue stream.

“We have been eagerly anticipating and preparing for this decision,” Greg Carlin, CEO of the company that owns Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, said in a statement reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “It’s exciting news for the consumer, the industry and the states. In addition to providing sports enthusiasts with a better, safer environment, (the) Supreme Court decision will redirect revenue previously lost to the black market and instead generate much-needed tax revenue at state and local levels.”

However, some in the industry think the powers-that-be in Pennsylvania are trying to take too large a cut from the future sports betting proceeds. The legislation now in place calls for casinos to pay an up-front fee of $10 million for the right to offer sports betting, with the state then skimming 34 percent of revenue off the top.

Eric Schippers, spokesman for Penn National Gaming Inc., which is acquiring Meadows Racetrack & Casino, told the P-G, “The challenge for Pennsylvania operators will be trying to make a 34 percent tax rate on sports betting work. This would be the highest tax rate in the world on sports betting. For comparison, West Virginia recently passed a sports betting law at 10 percent, which is the range most states are considering.”

Joseph Weinert, who has studied Pennsylvania’s casino industry for Spectrum Gaming Group of New Jersey, told the newspaper that casinos here are “going to be challenged to make a profit (from sports betting) at that kind of a tax rate.”

There’s likely to be some lobbying and negotiations before the final pieces of the sports betting puzzle fall into place in Pennsylvania, but we can be fairly well certain that those who offer the new gambling option will do very well for themselves, and that the folks in Harrisburg will get plenty of “free” cash to help them continue to avoid making hard decisions about the annual state budget.

And though there will be many winners with this new wagering, let’s not forget that there will be losers, most notably those with gambling problems who will now have another, very convenient way in which they can be separated from their money.

As with most things in this country these days, the rich will get richer, but some folks will most assuredly get poorer.