Last month ended with nine of Pennsylvania’s casinos applying for interactive gaming licenses. At this morning’s meeting of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board three of them were approved to offer interactive gaming.

All three will be able to offer online poker. Most significant of these has got to be the Mount Airy Resort Casino which announced a partnership with PokerStars this week. Mt Airy also has a deal with 888 which dates back to 2015.

Mount Airy is comparatively small compared to its peers, but it has big ambitions to stake out its place in Pennsylvania online gambling.

Pennsylvania’s new gambling laws allow casinos to partner with multiple online operators and vice versa; operators can partner with multiple casinos. Mount Airy looks to have bagged two of the biggest names in US online poker and can look forward to a large share of the online poker market.

The regulations insist that Mount Airy’s name must be featured prominently on the poker rooms offered by 888 and PokerStars, so any internet traffic that they generate should also feed through to increased traffic in the live casino.

We also learned on Wednesday that Presque Isle Downs petitioned for online slots and table games only with the PGCB.

Harrah’s and Parx are also early starters
The other two approvals went to Chester Downs and Marina, LLC, operator of Harrah’s Casino Philadelphia and Greenwood Gaming & Entertainment, Inc., operator of the Parx Casino.

Each of the three casinos will be allowed to offer:

Online slot machines;
Online table games; and,
Online poker
The other six license applicants, together with any late applicants will be considered at the PGCB’s meetings in September and October.

PokerStars Pennsylvania to launch in Q1 2019
During The Stars Group Q2 earnings call on Monday, CEO Rafi Ashkenazi expressed his belief that online poker would go live sometime in the first quarter of 2019, but couldn’t confirm the schedule, partly because the PGCB hadn’t yet issued their approval.

Now that approval is confirmed, PokerStars may be able to launch at the early end of that time bracket.

Ashkenazi also told investors that the group also planned to offer sports betting in Pennsylvania. However, to date there have been no notifications that any of the casinos have applied for the $10 million sports betting licenses. News can be expected soon.

This article is a reprint from OnlinePokerReport.com.  To view the original story and comment, click here.