A day ahead of the opening of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States (NCLGS) in New Orleans, Louisiana lawmakers began educating themselves about online gambling.
At a Louisiana state legislature senate judiciary revenue and fiscal committee hearing today (11 December), a sea of land-based casino operators threw their support behind legalising igaming. But the Cordish Companies was a naysayer.
And one consultant called out Cordish for its contradictory stance. The company is lobbying against a digital expansion of gaming in Louisiana, but operates an online casino in Pennsylvania.
The anti position is not new for the Cordish Companies. The company has land-based casinos in Florida, Louisiana, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Earlier this year, it won the right to build locations in New Hampshire and Virginia. When Maryland lawmakers in 2024 made a push to legalise online casino, it was Cordish that pushed back. At that time, company representatives called icasino a “jobs killer” with “inflated revenue projections” that will stymie economic development while “cannibialis[ing] gaming tax revenue”.
But the company is in the minority among casino operators. Representatives from Boyd Gaming, which operates five gambling locations in Louisiana, and Caesars Entertainment, which owns three properties in Louisiana, enthusiastically support an expansion. Former Michigan lawmaker Brandt Iden, now head of government relations for Fanatics Betting & Gaming, also spoke in support.
Representatives from Boyd and Caesars called igaming “additive” to their businesses. They said online gambling “attracts a different kind” of consumer than brick-and-mortar casinos. Ashley Menou Center, head of government relations for Boyd, said online gambling “doesn’t take players out of the brick-and-mortar, it brings new players to the market.”
Cordish: igaming a “bad bet” for Louisiana
But Cordish – along with the Louisiana Video Gaming Association (LVGA) – pushed a different agenda. During his opening remarks, Cordish general counsel Mark Stewart called online casino a “bad bet” for Louisiana. He went on to show photos of land-based properties, some with casinos and some without. He also showed a photo of a job fair and said, “it’s important to point out that you will never see something like that with igaming.”
Stewart went on to say that while the financial reward is significant – though overstated – the social cost of igaming is “too high”. He showed a Deutsche Bank slide that revealed an 11.7% decline in physical casino revenue in three states with live igaming. That was compared to a 17.7% increase in revenue in six states without legal igaming.
Stewart shared myriad charts and graphs. He shared figures showing land-based casino losses and stunted growth in legal igaming states. And he showed stats around the increase in addiction in legal markets.
He went on to call online casino “gambling fentanyl”, shared that calls to the Louisiana’s gambling hotline calls have spiked 335% since digital sports betting launched in 2022 and pointed to failed online gambling experiences in other jurisdictions.
More gambling = more opportunity for addiction
Problem and responsible gambling lobbyist Brianne Doura-Schawohl backed Stewart up. She shared that problem gambling issues grow when illegal gaming and legal gambling are combined in the same market. She argued that “legalisation is not a remedy here. Gambling addiction, it’s not a personal problem, it’s a family problem, it’s a community problem, it’s a global problem.”
Doura-Schawohl was testifying for the Campaign for Fairer Gambling (CFG).
Stewart also argued that other casino companies support an online expansion as a “pretext” for limiting the black market. Among the reports Stewart cited was a report from YieldSec commissioned by the CFG. The 2024 Super Bowl report showed that twice as many illegal bets were placed versus legal bets. It also revealed that the illegal market accounted for 65% of all wagers. But Stewart did not indicate that the report is compiled in part by projections. There is no way to definitively track bets on the illegal market.
Regulus Partners in February offered that it found that illegal bookmakers account for 19% of traditional betting engagement. Regulus also showed that legal operators accounted for 45% of all Super Bowl bets. That is a significantly higher number than the number the CFG put out.
Igaming taxes saved Detroit
In the bigger picture, even legal operators would agree that the black market is dominant. But the goal of legalisation is to tamp that down. And US consumers are already playing – Stewart said in his testimony that online casino is “like opening a casino in your bedroom”. Those in all but seven states are playing without consumer protections or a guarantee that they will be paid for wins.
The Cordish representatives were followed by Iden, one of legal icasino’s biggest proponents. Iden was the architect of the 2019 Michigan law legalising digital sports betting and online casino.
Among the pros that Iden shared is that in Michigan “casinos pay taxes daily. That’s every day at the end of the day at 4.59pm … the mayor of Detroit has talked to me many times about this issue, and he said, ‘Brandt, thanks because of that legislation in the state of Michigan, I was able to keep boots on the ground, I was able to keep first responders here, I was able to keep our streetlights on. When the pandemic hit this city the hardest, igaming was there.’ And that is a very moving statement from a city that had a very tumultuous time.”
Video lottery companies: This is our “rubicon”
Sitting at the witness table with Iden was Alton Ashy, representing the LVGA. He said legal online gaming “is video poker’s rubicon. We will die on this hill. There is nothing we are more opposed to.”
Ashy said there is “absolutely no benefit to the state” and criticised the digital sports betting tax rate. Digital wagering is taxed at 15% compared to 32% for video lottery games. He also suggested that any money made by online casino operators would leave the state. In addition, he said that had online casino been legal five years ago, he believes it is unlikely that Caesars or other land-based casino operators would have made investments in their physical casinos.
Not so fast…
But John Pappas, a consultant who was representing the industry group iDEA Growth, called out Cordish and the LVGA.
“I thought that the Cordish point of view was interesting… when you recognise that they are an online casino operator in other states,” he testified. Pappas went on to read off the Cordish Pennsylvania online casino website, which calls its product “the hottest action in the palm of your hand”.
Pappas said he wanted to “put that into context that those who might oppose this in Louisiana realise that they do see opportunity for them and their casinos in other jurisdictions.” Senator Mike Reese interjected that he had spoken with Cordish representatives who said that they would certainly participate in a legal Louisiana market, but they are hoping to prevent one.
“That’s a very interesting principal position,” Pappas said.
With regard to LVGA concerns, Pappas pointed to a Spectrum study commissioned in Wyoming which found “no erosion of the VGT gaming market” in West Virginia (one of the states studied) and that the study revealed that “igaming has been accretive rather than cannibalistic to casino and distributive gaming sectors”.
