Public Gaming Magazine Sept/Oct 2021

52 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 iLottery Appears to be Viewed Differently than Online Sports Betting by Most State Legislators Mark Hichar Shareholder of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, resident in its Boston office I t is an understatement to say that 2020 – 2021 have been years of great change in the online gaming industry. COVID-19 has brought significant changes to the way we live day-to-day, and among the changes that have occurred in the past year and a half, there has been an explosion of online gaming. This has been led largely by legislative action authorizing sports betting. Through the first eight months of 2021 alone, legislation authorizing online (i.e., via a mobile app and/or website) sports betting was passed in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida (pending federal approval of a Tribal Compact), Louisiana, Maryland, New York and Wyoming. In addition, Nebraska, South Dakota and Washington authorized certain on-premises sports betting. Since the Supreme Court’s May 2018 decision that struck down the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (the “PASPA”), sports betting of some form has been authorized in 29 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, making thirty-one U.S. jurisdictions (including Nevada, where sports betting was legalized in 1949) in which some form of sports betting currently is authorized (although it has yet to go live in some of those states). In some cases – for example Arizona, Connecticut and Pennsylvania – laws that authorized sports betting also authorized the state lottery to sell lottery games online, via lottery websites and mobile applications (so-called “iLottery”). This has been unusual, however, as in most cases, state sports betting legislation has not included an expansion of the state lottery’s sales channels. According to one state legislation tracker, the following U.S. state lotteries now offer lottery games for sale via websites or mobile applications (and Arizona and Connecticut have been added, as iLottery was authorized in those states after this tracker’s legislative map was published): Arizona* (on premises four-minute keno a draw game) Connecticut* (a four-minute draw game) Georgia (draw and instant) Illinois* (draw only) Kentucky (draw and instant) Maine (draw only, by subscription) Maryland* (draw only, by subscription) Massachusetts (draw only, by subscription) Michigan* (draw and instant) New Hampshire* (draw and instant)