New Jersey’s population is twice the size of Delaware’s and Nevada’s combined, so the MSIGA grew by 300%.
New Jersey, Nevada, and Delaware began their online poker player sharing agreement on Tuesday, May 1. Late last year, New Jersey agreed to join the Multi State Internet Gaming Association (MSIGA) to share poker players across state lines.
The Multi State Internet Gaming Association is called the “interstate poker compact” or “poker liquidity sharing” by various people associated with the US online gambling industry. A bigger poker community helps card sites to organize events with larger prize pools, thus developing interest in tournaments and cash games alike.
The interstate poker compact therefore should increase poker revenues in each state. While card players in the three states compete against each other, operators and state treasuries collect the revenues ceded by players who reside in their individual state.
WSOP.com’s Poker Player Community
WSOP.com is the online poker website to benefit from Tuesday’s MSIGA launch. WSOP New Jersey and WSOP Neveda are poker sites which operate in their respective states. Those two poker portals are maintained by 888 Poker software, which also maintains the three online gambling sites which operate in Delaware: the sites owned by Dovers Downs, Harrington Racecourse, and Delaware Park.
The WSOP.com site is owned by Caesars Entertainment, the Las Vegas Strip casino company which owns three casinos in Atlantic City: Caesars AC, Harrah’s AC, and Bally’s Atlantic City. Caesars Entertainment owns the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Paradise, Nevada, a suburb of Las Vegas. Since 2005, the Rio Casino has been the site of the annual World Series of Poker, the largest and most prestigious live poker tournament all year. Caesars owns the World Series of Poker and WSOP.com.
Bill Rini Describes “Monumental Day”
Bill Rini, who serves as the online poker director for WSOP, said the inclusion of New Jersey in the interstate poker compact is a “monumental day” that serves as a “game-changer for players”.
Rini added, “Players will now find a wider variety of game selection, both in cash games and tournaments, with larger prize pools. Additionally, players in New Jersey will get their first opportunity to play for WSOP gold bracelets from the comfort of their own home….We hope is the model blueprint for additional states to join the fray.”
WSOP Works with GeoComply
In discussing the launch of 3-state online poker, WSOP highlighted its partnership with GeoComply, a private company which assures online gamblers are inside the state borders where they claim to be — a technology called geolocation. Opponents of legal US online gambling have claimed an interstate poker compact violates gaming bans in other states, because New Jersey, Nevada, and Delaware could not enforce online gambling in three states alone.
When New Jersey online gambling first launched in November 2013, geolocation issues were an issue — though it mainly banned New Jersey players living near the state borders. A few months after launch, geolocation issues on smartphones were resolved. In a series of hearings from 2014 to 2016, proponents of regulated online poker convinced most US lawmakers that geolocation works by pointing to the obvious example of GPS systems and how they work in the cars and smartphones most Americans use every day.
New Jersey Joins Interstate Poker Compact
While casual observers might wonder whether Bill Rini’s statement is hyperbole, New Jersey’s addition to the interestate poker impact could be a watershed moment. New Jersey has twice the population of Nevada and Delaware combined. The Nevada/Delaware poker liquidity arrangement has failed to drive player pools or prize pools to any notable degree, but the two states built a framework which other states could join. It is the threefold increase of that framework that now promises better days ahead for licenses US online poker.
When New Jersey’s legislature amended certain of its online gambling laws to allow the state to enter the compact in October 2017, Caesars Entertainment released a statement which said, “We applaud the government leadership and the regulators in New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware for reaching this meaningful agreement.”
“We will immediately begin efforts to take our existing Delaware-Nevada compact and add New Jersey to the mix by following the requirements established by the regulators so WSOP.com can share liquidity with all three states.”
Poker Liquidity Data on PokerScout.com
The impact was noticed by PokerScout.com, which announced that the number of poker players on WSOP.com averaged around 400 throughout the day. The numbers had been in the 160 range for months. While PokerScout’s number did not suggest a threefold increase so far, it is in the range on the first day of operations. The weekend numbers should be a key touchstone, because Saturday and Sunday typically have the biggest events and biggest player pools of the week.
Brian Sandoval on Interstate Poker Compact
The Multi State Internet Gaming Association that is emerging is a result of the vision of Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware. When the two first signed an interstate poker compact in February 2014, the two men touted the agreement as a landmark moment.
Gov. Sandoval said, “We are standing in a moment of history — a landmark intersection in the road of the gaming industry. We want to pioneer the new digital space together….I see this as an opportunity for the states to show leadership and show it can work.”
Jack Markell on MSIGA
That vision has not always looked clear, because the two states are too small to produce a major online poker market. The idea always was to create the MSIGA as a draw for big states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, and New York. New Jersey’s inclusion is the next step to drawing even bigger states to the interstate poker compact.
Jack Markell added on the day he signed the MSIGA in February 2014, “We should do everything we can to make our gaming industry as competitive as it can be.”
About 888 Poker
888 Holdings is a Gibraltar-based global online gambling company which owns 888poker, 888casino, 888 Sport, and sites in a variety of other gaming categories. 888 Holdings is traded on the London Stock Exchange and a member of the FTSE 250 Index, which charts the No. 101 to No. 350 largest companies on the London Stock Exchange.
