Since 1992, sports betting had been illegal in all states but Nevada (with limited exceptions in Delaware, Montana, and Oregon).

After six years of intense lobbying and $9 million in legal fees, the Supreme Court sided with New Jersey to legalize sports betting in that state.

The ruling has opened the door for sports betting nationwide.

Just as legalized marijuana ourished across 30 states and the District of Columbia after Colorado and Washington voted to approve recreational marijuana in 2012... legalized gambling is about to explode across America.

Unlike marijuana—which is still illegal at the federal level—sports gambling now has the blessing of the nation’s highest court. The majority opinion said that Congress can’t commandeer states to “enact or enforce a federal regulatory program.”

In other words, states now have the Supreme Court’s blessing to follow their own path regardless of federal law when it comes to regulating sports betting. We believe this “legal cover” will result in a profusion of states enacting pro-gambling laws in the coming years.

Just this month, New Jersey’s governor signed a law legalizing sports betting. Nearly 20 other states have introduced similar bills to legalize sports betting.

A 2017 report from Eilers & Krejcik Gaming estimates that as many as 32 states could o er legal betting within the next ve years.

The Supreme Court ruling opens the oodgates to cash-strapped states looking to ll their co ers with some of the $150 billion raked in annually by illegal sports betting operations.

But it’s not just sports gambling that will grow... Online casinos are set to surge as well. Juniper Research expects online casino wager volumes to hit $1 trillion by 2021.

As gaming laws across the nation start to loosen, online gambling of all types will ourish. But the industry faces some serious obstacles...

The Gambling Industry Is Booming

We understand gambling is controversial.

But whichever side of the gambling debate you fall on, one thing you can’t deny is this business is booming.

Take online casino gambling. In just 20 years, the industry has blossomed from zero to handling almost $500 billion in player bets this year. Juniper research estimates that by 2021, global online gambling wagers will reach $1 trillion.

But the industry has problems (which apply to sports betting, too).

Chief among them are the outrageous costs for running an online casino.

Some of the biggest operators have server farms that house thousands of computers to store data and run gaming systems. To keep the server farms running, casino operators hire armies of software engineers and support sta .

In addition to the hardware costs, most online casinos have high software costs, too. That’s because they don’t own the software that runs their games... They license it.

The licensing fees can be loan-shark like. Initial fees are in the six gures. On top of that, operators have to pay anywhere from 15-45% of their gaming revenue to the software provider. Plus, gaming companies lose as much as 12% per transaction in fees to payment processors.

Aside from massive ongoing overhead, there is a bigger problem hampering the entire sector.

As big as online gaming is, it pales in comparison to land-based casinos. Online operators make $50 billion per year o player bets. The land-based operators are making over $500 billion. That’s 10 times more.

So what’s holding back an explosion in online gaming? The problem is trust.

When you go to Las Vegas, you’re not worried about converting your chips back to cash. You’re not worried about collecting on a big sports bet. You don’t fear the roulette wheel has been jiggered with or the Blackjack dealer is cheating.

In the online gambling world, players don’t have this type of trust.

There is no real proof the games are fair. You never really know if you’ll get the cash you won fair and square. Players have to trust the casinos won’t run o with their bankroll.

Lack of player trust—along with high server costs, software licensing fees, and payment processor costs (including customer chargebacks)—are like a 1,000-pound weight on the back of the industry.

Yet even with all these handicaps, online casino growth has been staggering. Can you imagine what will happen to the industry once every problem that plagues it disappears?

Now match that with the friendly regulatory environment shaping up in the United States... and you have all the ingredients for a mega-boom just like we saw in the marijuana industry.

Sounds good for Scorum?

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