Online sports betting in North Carolina successfully launched on March 11 with great fanfare in a sports-heavy state that checks a lot of boxes for sportsbook operators.
It was a really big deal for all parties involved and will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue for the Tar Heel State over the next five years.
Now that online gambling has a foothold in North Carolina, there’s another money generator potentially on the horizon: iGaming.
North Carolina State Rep. Zack Hawkins (D-Durham) told Covers this week that he could see a push for legal online casinos in the coming future.
“That has come up quite a bit,” said Hawkins, a sports betting proponent who was in charge of deterring how the tax revenue would be used. “I could see iGaming coming up for discussion in the long session. In the next two to four years, you could have a serious discussion.”
North Carolina’s General Assembly meets for the longer session in odd years and the short session in even years, so there won’t be time this year to gauge real interest in legalizing iGaming.
Big business
Online casinos could be a hotly debated topic. Only seven U.S. states – Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan, Connecticut, and Rhode Island – currently offer iGaming.
It’s a step many states, like New York, haven’t been willing to take, despite the revenue appeal.
The Wolverine State, which is close in population to North Carolina, generated $1.9 billion in online gaming revenue in 2023 with $354 million in taxes and fees going to Michigan’s coffers.
Lined up and ready
DraftKings Chief Commercial Officer Jeremy Elbaum told Covers in Charlotte this week at the online sports betting launch event that the sportsbook and iGaming operator would be very interested in online casinos if legalized in North Carolina.
Other sportsbooks in the Tar Heel State would likely follow suit.
DraftKings and rival FanDuel both operate online casinos in five U.S. states and Ontario, Canada. BetMGM and Caesars operate iGaming platforms in four states, and Fanatics Sportsbook has recently launched online gaming in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Keep it separated
One of the keys to getting something of that magnitude passed, Hawkins said, is to keep it simple.
North Carolina started with sports betting because it could be dissected and explained on its own merit in the legislature instead of bringing iGaming or brick-and-mortar casinos into the picture, which could lead to confusion.
“If we had tried to add on two or three concepts, everything would fail,” Hawkins said.
Missouri is finding that out as the Show Me State’s legislature has had a hard time passing sports betting bills in part because of video terminal lotteries being attached to them.
Remaining ‘thoughtful’
And then there are brick-and-mortar casinos to consider in North Carolina.
As Hawkins said, that’s not a new issue and one that is separate from any attempts to legalize iGaming because of the magnitude and employment involved with in-person casinos.
The Tar Heel State currently offers three tribal U.S. casinos, two run by the Eastern Band of Cherokee and the other by the Catawba.
At the very least, there will be ongoing discussions in the coming years about both brick-and-mortar and online casinos.
“We want to make sure we’re thoughtful,” Hawkins said.
