Steven Ruddock

To borrow a phrase from the Grateful Dead, Maryland’s efforts to launch legal mobile sports betting apps have been a long, strange trip. Fortunately, the journey, which began in November 2020, is coming to an end, as the state has its sights set on a late-2022 launch date. The final timeline was put forth in…

Massachusetts was an on-again-off-again contender to legalize sports betting in 2022. After months of seesawing back and forth, a conference committee pulled a rabbit out of the hat in late July, and Massachusetts joined the ranks of legal sports betting states. There was a sliver of hope that Massachusetts would be able to get its…

A common saying in online gambling circles is, “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.” In sports betting, this is generally applied to the spread of legal betting and the near-insurmountable hurdles an anti-sports betting crusade would face. With so many states now in the legalized sports betting column (and reaping the financial…

According to recent polling from UC Berkeley, both California sports betting ballot referendums appearing on the November ballot (Prop 26 and Prop 27) are severely underwater with voters. Prop 26, a tribal-backed initiative that would legalize in-person sports betting at tribal casinos and racetracks, fared slightly better than Prop 27, which seeks to legalize online…

According to a Pew Research Center survey, 19% of US adults placed a wager on sports in the past year. While this is an exciting number, the breakdowns contained in the Pew survey are far more enlightening. There is a lot of conflation between what I’ll call a friendly bet and gambling. The simplest way…

Last week a District Court in Rhode Island gave online gambling supporters the latest in a string of Wire Act victories. The case, International Game Technology PLC et al. v. Merrick B Garland & The United States Department of Justice, gave the industry more cover against potential prosecution. Still, the implications of the decision do…

If you dig through my voluminous archives of gambling articles, you’ll come across several thousand words on millennials. From 2014ish to 2017ish, millennials were the proverbial talk of the gambling town. Conferences were overflowing with presentations explaining the “Millennial Problem” and how such-and-such product or service could solve it. The funny thing is, the Millennial…

When it comes to the U.S. online gambling industry, the conventional wisdom is online poker is the past, sports betting is the present, and online casino is the future. While there is a lot of truth to that perspective, it’s perhaps oversimplified. A more nuanced view of the online gambling landscape would point to online…

The American Gaming Association released its annual survey on betting habits ahead of the NFL season. As always, the survey demonstrates a thirst among the American public to bet on NFL games. The topline numbers clearly indicate the popularity of betting and the NFL: Nearly 1-in-5 US adults will place a wager on NFL games…

There was a lot of chatter following the first batch of online gambling and sports betting market and revenue numbers by iGaming Ontario. The release covers the first three months of Ontario’s online gambling industry, which had a much-ballyhooed launch on April 4. After the buildup and excitement, the industry waited months for revenue numbers.…

California is the online gambling industry’s white whale. Operators have long sought to find an entry point to the country’s most populous state and the world’s fifth largest economy. The industry has discovered the state’s entry points are expensive, tightly sealed, and well-guarded by a trio of entrenched and powerful gaming interests and a political…

Ohio settled on Jan. 1, 2023, to launch its mobile sports betting industry. Once you overlook the somewhat ridiculous choice to launch at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day, the Ohio sports betting industry is expected to be one the best performing in the country, with all the usual suspects involved. Based on…