If the gambling industry has to settle for state-by-state legalization, California represents the Holy Grail of online gambling in the US. It’s by far the most populous state in the union with a $2 trillion market that could rank number 8 on earth if it was its own country. International gambling websites have gone out of their way to obtain licenses in countries much smaller than California.
All eyes are on California as states mull legalizing a variety of types of online gambling. If California does ever go the method of legalization, it would by default be the standard by which gaming is quantified in the USA. If the nation does eventually dominate gambling and it is successful, other nations will surely follow suit. We might even see something eventually happen at the federal level.
Various pieces of legislation have been introduced, shot down and reintroduced in recent decades. We do not have anything important to report yet, but most observers are cautiously optimistic that California will at some point make a serious move toward legalization. Here’s why:
The country has a pro-gambling civilization The state has legal casinos and card rooms
It is home to numerous Indian tribes That Are experienced in gambling California has a spending problem and the potential tax revenues must surely be enticing for state lawmakers
Present List of Betting Sites in California
We are going to discuss the different betting options in California in greater detail below, however I’d like to begin with a quick list of gambling sites that are available right now in California. If you came here looking for a place to bet online, these are the sites that will permit you to play and bet real money now.
Sports Gaming:
RankBetting SiteBonusRatingVisit
1
100% up to $50
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Fantasy Sports:
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1
Up to 4 Free Entries
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2
Free Contest Entry
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Horse and Greyhound Betting:
RankBetting SiteBonusRatingVisit
1
$20 Free + 100% up to $100
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2
100% up to $100
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3
Wager $500, Get $100
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Online Lottery Tickets:
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No Bonuses Offered
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Games of Skill:
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Daily Offers and Specials
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Sports Betting at California
Lawmakers in California have demonstrated some interest in legalizing sports betting of late. A bill introduced at the 2017/18 session proposed amending existing gaming law to permit the California legislature to authorize sports gambling determined by the Supreme Court overturning the national sports betting ban (which it did).
ACA 18 itself didn’t seek to legalize wagering; it instead provided a constitutional amendment that would enable lawmakers to legalize and regulate sports gambling in the future. After he introduced the bill, Assemblyman Adam Gray said,”The choice isn’t’if we have sports wagering or not possess sports wagering.’ We all do have sports wagering.”
The point he was making is that sports betting is already a huge black market in California and throughout the USA. The American Gaming Association estimates Americans wager at least $154 billion per year on sports with internet sportsbooks and local bookies contrary to the law. The current state prohibition isn’t working, the logic goes, so the smart thing to do is legalize it, regulate it and tax it.
A report from Eilers & Krejcik Gaming published in 2017 believes California is likely to legalize sports betting in five years from the date of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn PASPA. California has plenty of potential to turn into a significant sports betting market, but as you’ll read in another segment, competing interests in the country have a tendency to complicate things.
Assemblyman Gray introduced the same legislation in 2018 and 2019 as he continues to push the situation. Finding the tribal groups on board has been exceedingly difficult as they dominate an $8 billion gaming industry and therefore are highly reluctant to get on board with sports betting at risk of opening their lucrative compacts with the condition to negotiation once more.
Online Poker at California
The pursuit for internet poker in California is being fought in the courtrooms because you read these words. Bills seeking to regulate internet poker have been released every year since 2007. None of these bills have made it all the way through the legislative process due to vying factions on all sides of the matter, but each year brings us nearer to finding an arrangement that satisfied all interested parties.
In fact, a lot of the problem can be attributed to competing interests in the state. It seems everyone has an agenda and it is difficult to find consensus among the Indian tribes, Cuban operators and existing online brands. 1 group or another always feels left out or targeted from the wording of legislation. And to be honest, that’s frequently a legitimate concern.
To add to the difficulty, there are still strong lobbying groups that actively combat the legalization of poker or any other form of internet gambling in the united states. Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson has vowed to fight legalization across the country. In California alone, he spent more than $300,000 to lobby against poker.
Not a single one of those bills introduced during the previous decade-plus has made considerable progress due to the many competing interests in the nation. The following bill is Only One of many attempts to make something happen in California, but it serves as a typical example of how complex and difficult it is to make progress in California:
AB 2291: Promising Start but Died in Committee
Assembly Bill 2291 was introduced way back in February 2014 but not made it beyond the committee phase. It was reintroduced in 2015 and 2016, but was unable to achieve the traction it had to make it much in the legislative process.
The bill sought to legalize online poker just and dilemma 10-year licenses to operators. The proposed fee for licensing has been originally set at $5,000,000, with this fee being used to offset future taxes. Lawmakers bumped that charge up several times until the fee hit a high of $12,500,000 without offsetting taxes.
Early variations of AB 2291 included several clauses that have resulted in tension between various factions competing for a piece of the poker pie. Most contentious among them is a”bad actor” clause. AB 2291 initially sought to require potential licensees to have a minimum of five years of gaming experience in California. It also required every facet of an operation, from its own employees to its equipment to its bank accounts to be kept in state.
Essentially, AB 2291 would have averted all of present online poker providers and newer neighborhood casinos in California out of competing. The wording of the bill very clearly favored a few established California casino classes at the cost of fair competition.
Another issue with AB 2291 was that it might have prohibited California from entering arrangements with other nations to combine player pools and enhance liquidity. In other words, you’d only see different Californians at the table no matter how many sates legalize poker. To top it off, and the bill would require the state to determine of any legislation passed at the federal level allowing internet poker.
Some progress was made in 2016 with a suggested amendment that would significantly alter the lousy actor clause. Formerly, the bill would have barred all online poker companies that operated after the passage of this federal Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. Such limitations would have prohibited established brand such as PokerStars from entering the marketplace.
The previous amendment proposes to instead transfer the chalk date for the awful celebrity clause up to the end of 2011. In other words, sites such as PokerStars that operated after the UIGEA but left the marketplace after the Black Friday indictments at 2011. This could stop the most egregious violators from entering the sector but afford PokerStars an opportunity to provide online poker legally in California. You can read more about the suggestion here.
Looking back in 2018: The Good and Bad
The Poor Lawmakers and tribal groups are stuck in stalemate for about four years now. It’s nice to see some progress on this front, but it is also discouraging to see the outright stubbornness on the part of varying factions. Poker players would be better served by an open and competitive market and player-sharing arrangements with other states.
Worse than all that, online poker seems to have taken a step back in 2018. For the first time in more than a decade, no bills trying to legalize online poker were introduced. Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sayer told Online Poker Report he’s giving up on online poker legislation for this season since there is simply no improvement being made in reaching a compromise between the tribes, local card rooms and other interested parties.
The Good There are some positive things to say about most of this. If poker is indeed legalized in California, the possible participant pool will much bigger than that which we have seen in other states that have already legalized online poker. Besides the fact that 38 million people call California home, the state has a poker culture already as a result of its numerous brick-and-mortar card rooms.
California is very likely to have fewer issues with geolocation of players due to the sheer size. New Jersey had all sorts of problems verifying players were actually located within the state. This ended up with loads of possible players being barred in the state-sanctioned websites there. California doesn’t have to compete with congested cities piled up on state boundaries.
Fantasy Sports
Whenever the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) has been passed in 2006, it supplied two noteworthy exceptions to online gambling: horse racing and fantasy sports. The UIGEA did not just exempt these kinds of gambling; it basically gave operators the go-ahead to provide their games to customers right here in the US.
Some states have since passed legislation banning online fantasy sports but California is not one of those. In case you’ve got a thing for sports gambling but prefer to do it at a protected and regulated manner, fantasy sports is your way to go. You draft a team just like in regular fantasy leagues but now you get paid real cash if you win.
FanDuel.com and DraftKings.com are the two largest players in this market. They both accept clients from CA and offer single-day fantasy leagues for your NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, college basketball and college football.
One of the pleasant things about online fantasy sports is each contest only lasts for a day or week in the most. You are not stuck with one group all season. Rather, your team stands up stats over the course of a single week. It’s possible to play in heads-up contests against other gamers or test your ability in massive tournaments which occasionally give away more than a million bucks to the first place winner.
You may read more about dream sports betting here.
Legislative Efforts for Daily Fantasy in California
2016 was an important year for its daily fantasy sports business in California. In January of 2016, lawmakers introduced AB 1437 in a bid to create a regulatory framework for daily fantasy sports websites. If enacted, the bill would require DFS websites to acquire a permit, enforce a minimum age of 21 for all clients, hold all customers’ funds in a segregated account and extend self-exclusion programs for players.
The bill advanced past three important votes by a total of 101 for and two against. This is an important bill for California and it appears increasingly likely to be passed to legislation. However, the bill itself does not really legalize online fantasy sports contests; it only places the states by which the industry would be regulated.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris is expected to issue a ruling on whether fantasy competitions constitute illegal gambling under state law. If she principles favorably, AB 1437 will have all set up to license and controlled dream sites instantly. The AG’s ruling has been expected for more than a year today. Meanwhile, California fantasy sports sites continue to function freely.
As of 2019, advancement on the bill appears to have completely stalled. The fantastic news is fantasy sports websites continue to be active throughout the state. Legalizing fantasy sports in California would essentially be a formality at this point.
Online Casinos
There are not yet any lawful online casinos in California. The state has not even attempted to pass laws in this respect so it’s going to likely be years before we see legitimate gambling websites open to CA residents.
Do not be fooled by the countless different websites that are currently recommending”legal” internet casinos. All these are actually offshore gambling sites that have no legal existence whatsoever in the United States. They’re unlicensed and completely unregulated.
Although to be honest, there aren’t any state or federal laws that prohibit playing offshore casinos. Should you decide to play online, nobody is going to come kick in your front door. The largest risk is financial — you never know for sure who you are working with on the other side of the screen. Some offshore casinos could be safe while some are clearly outright scams. But no matter where you play, you don’t have any legal recourse if things go belly up.
Your very best option would be to look at any of the other authorized, accredited and safe types of betting that can be found right now in California. Between horse racing, fantasy sports and many likely online poker very soon, there are still lots of different methods to play real money games online at protected, accredited sites based in the US.
Horse Betting
Online horse racing is alive and well in California. The horse gambling situation here isn’t nearly as complex as the poker situation. California does allow residents to play US-licensed horse wagering websites for example TwinSpires, BetAmerica and TVG.
Each of the major US-based horse betting sites accept clients from California. The state also allows off-track betting (OTB) facilities. OTB facilities operate as brick-and-mortar gaming stores where people may walk in, put bets on races and collect their winnings in person.
Five racetracks operate upon the state and they too allow for real cash wagering. In total, you are able to bet online at any one of the accepted horse betting websites, off-track at an OTB place or in-house in any of the monitors listed below. California is also home to state and county fairs that maintain races at various times annually.
The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) oversees all horse racing and wagering within the state. The CHRB’s assignment is to guarantee the integrity, viability and safety of the state’s horse racing industry. They oversee wagering, breeding, bodily security and the marketing of horse racing.
California Racetracks
CalExpo:
The California Exposition and State Fair functions a yearlong harness racetrack that runs every day at around 5:20 PM.
1600 Exposition Drive
Sacramento, CA 95815
Website Golden Gate Fields
This track is situated in Berkley with races and simulcast events weekly.
1100 Eastshore Highway
Berkley, CA 94710
Site Santa Anita
Santa Anita is among the most widely recognized racetracks in the USA and home to major events like the Santa Anita Derby, Santa Anita Handicap and occasionally the Breeder’s Cup.
285 W. Huntington Drive
Arcadia, CA 91007
Site Del Mar
Del Mar opened in 1937 with a renowned race between Seabiscuit and Ligaroti. Seabiscuit barely took the race and became a legend of his own. Now, Del Mar plays host to racing events, concerts, family fun days and much more.
2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd..
Del Mar, CA 92014
Website Los Alamitos
Los Alamitos Race Course is home to daylight thoroughbred racing and nighttime quarter racing. The track is home to a number of the largest quarter horse bets races in the united states.
4961 E. Katella Ave.
Los Alamitos, CA 90720
Website OTB Locations
You will find 31 off-track betting facilities in California. OTB centers are seen in fairgrounds, racetracks, specialty OTB shops, casinos and fairgrounds. You can see a complete list of locations and addresses .
Internet Bingo
There appears to be no motivation to especially legalize online bingo in California. The only realistic chance I see online bingo coming to California is if it gets caught up in some upcoming internet casino legislation.
Lottery Games
Ca lottoThe California state lottery is not licensed to sell tickets on the internet or via phone. For years, the federal Wire Act banned states from selling lotto tickets on the net. This might not be the case forever. In 2009, New York and Illinois requested the Department of Justice to clarify its position on the Wire Act and explain exactly which forms of online gambling were illegal.
The DOJ responded in 2011 with a decision that’d far-reaching consequences beyond just the lottery. Back in September of 2011, the DOJ issued an announcement that its official interpretation of the Wire Act only applies to sports betting on the internet. This gave states the go-ahead to sell tickets online if they choose.
Lottery Subscription Websites California hasn’t yet joined the growing list of states that sell lottery tickets on the web. However, there are a number of messenger services which can go buy lottery tickets at face value for a monthly subscription fee. You can log into those sites, pay face value for your tickets and the company will go and buy tickets on your title.
For example, LottoGopher.com is a California-based membership site that provides this specific service. The website is registered in California, its owners are background-checked by lottery commission officers and it abides by all state and federal legislation. They are not legally allowed to sell lotto tickets for more than face value, therefore they instead charge users a subscription fee.
A membership at LottoGopher lets you buy tickets online, select certain numbers and even form lotto pools with different members. If you win less than $600, Lotto Gopher will charge the winnings to your account which you can then draw straight to the bank. If you win more than $600, Lotto Gopher will claim the prize on your behalf in person then send you a check for the complete amount.
The site does not require a cut of your winnings. They only way that they make money is by charging clients a flat subscription fee. At this time, LottoGopher is only available in California. You can learn more and give it a try here:
www.lottogopher.com
lotto gopher
Is Lotto Gopher legit?
Yes. They’re located in California and say lottery officials understand who they are. It is great that you ask though since there are a ton of online lotto sites which feel and look legit but aren’t. Lotto Gopher really is lawful and 100% untrue.
They’ve been all over the media in recent years too. Forbes and ABC have both written articles about the service.
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