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A proposal to allow Maryland voters to decide whether to legalize internet casino gaming failed to get out of the legislature and onto this year’s ballot due to strong and coordinated opposition from unions representing casino workers and several gaming companies.
Maryland’s House of Delegates passed House Bill 1319 to put a referendum on the November ballot by a vote of 92-43 largely along party lines in March, clearing the three-fifths majority needed to pass a state constitutional amendment.
But the bill sponsored by Maryland Delegate Vanessa Atterbeary, a Democrat, failed to receive a vote in a Senate committee and expired when the legislative session ended on April 8.
“In Maryland, iGaming has to go to a referendum because it is considered an expansion of gaming,” said Senator Ron Watson, a Democrat who authored a companion measure to the bill that was approved by the House. “We are looking to reintroduce it in 2026.”
Watson introduced two bills to legalize iGaming in Maryland, but other than receiving one hearing in the Senate Taxation Committee, his measures went nowhere.
“In retrospect, I would have done things a lot differently,” Watson told attendees at the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States summer meeting in Pittsburgh.
Typically, as a legislator, Watson said, you can come up with a great idea, send it to the bill drafting office and submit it for comments among stakeholders once the measure comes back before moving it through the approval process.
That approach will not work for iGaming in Maryland, according to Watson.
“If you really want iGaming to pass, you need to have a campaign as if it is a ballot referendum to really push things forward,” Watson said. “The legislator, I just the quarterback; all we do is introduce the bill. You need a whole team behind this type of legislation.”
Watson suggested lawmakers hire a marketing team to really make things happen.
He explained to some 300 attendees at the NCLGS conference that, in Maryland, industry arguments that online casino games do not cannibalize revenue at brick-and-mortar facilities were undercut by an official study produced by the Innovation Group on behalf of lawmakers that projected a 10 percent cannibalization rate.
Out of the six casino operators in Maryland, MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment expressed their support for a ballot referendum on iGaming, while Baltimore-based Cordish Cos. and Churchill Downs were opposed to online gaming.
Ryan Eller, executive vice president and general manager of Maryland Live! casino near Baltimore, expressed the company's concerns in March at an iGaming Town Hall hosted by Morgan State University.
Watson said casino operators opposed to iGaming engaged workers unions, had picket lines, and materials were put under legislators’ doors every day during the session.
“They had a campaign,” Watson said. “They were willing to put money behind this campaign to fight this initiative.”
The unions woke up, Watson said, because they thought they were going to lose jobs as a result of legal iGaming.
Maryland's legislation included a fund of $10m to assist any workers displaced as a result of the legalization of iGaming, as well as setting aside 1 percent of revenue for state gaming regulators to assist their staff with oversight of the industry.
The bill would have made a total of 30 licenses available to the state's six land-based casinos and so-called Class B sports wagering facility licenses, including off-track betting outlets and charitable bingo halls.
Although iGaming tax rates remain a controversial topic among gaming industry executives and analysts, Watson refused to apologize for supporting the House-approved bill’s maximum 55 percent tax rate on iGaming revenue.
“Why 55 percent? Because I have to sell it. 'What’s in it for me?' is what legislators wanted to know,” the veteran lawmaker told the NCLGS conference.
Watson made it clear that Maryland needed the tax revenue that iGaming could potentially generate. He said it was a comparable situation to 2007 when Maryland was also facing a $1.7bn structural deficit and moved to authorize land-based casinos initially limited to slot machines.
Shawn Fluharty, NCLGS president and a state Democratic Representative in West Virginia, acknowledged there was a perception gap between the industry and the general public with regard to iGaming, and he asked Watson what does that gap look like in Maryland.
Watson said to get the community on board with legalizing online gaming, the public also will want to know what is in it for them, whose lives are going to change, and how many jobs will it generate.
“We can insult peoples’ intelligence,” he said. “We have to be honest and give them a real reason from a community benefit, why we are doing this. Education of the legislature. Don’t try to convince an 80-year-old legislator who doesn’t have Facebook, Twitter or Instagram about iGaming.”
Fluharty said every state is nuanced but there are “many different avenues to get a bill passed and there are obstacles along that avenue.”
“We’ve seen it in Maryland and many other states,” Fluharty said. Efforts to pass iGaming legislation this year also came up short in Illinois and New York.
Watson agreed that all states are different, but warned lawmakers to consider everything before they introduce legislation because “the thing that you miss will bite you”.
