On Oct. 26, 2017, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed H 271, legalizing online casinos, poker sites and daily fantasy sports in Pennsylvania.

Gov. Tom Wolf signed the bill into law on Oct. 30, making Pennsylvania the fourth state in the nation to authorize some form of online gambling.

In the case of PA, the law authorizes pretty much all forms of online gambling, including poker, table games, slots, lottery, daily fantasy sports, and sports betting, now that the federal ban is overturned.

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The two questions that come up most often in regards to PA online gambling are: When will it happen, and what will the market look like?

In response to the first question, now that the state has legalized online gambling, it will take about 6-12 months for it to launch. For reference, it took New Jersey around nine months to launch its legal market after bill passage.

In all likelihood, PA residents will gain access to real money online games in the later part of 2018.

As for the second question: What would the PA online gambling market look like? For an answer to that, we can look to the online gambling market in New Jersey. What we’ve seen there is a market where online casino games have performed quite well, generating a few hundred million in revenue and showing steady growth since launch.

Online poker in NJ has been a bit of a different story. Thanks to a number of competing providers and a relatively small population, NJ has been left with a somewhat tepid online poker market that generates a fraction of the revenue online casino games generate.

Pennsylvania’s online gambling market is likely to follow a similar path. While PA does enjoy a population that is significantly larger than NJ, the same general contours are likely to emerge. What we expect is for online casino in PA to perform incredibly well, possibly generating as much as $20mm a month in revenue. PA online poker will likely be a less significant contributor to overall revenue, likely somewhere in the area of $3mm once the market settles.