2024 Gambling Year in Review, Part 1

For over a decade i have been breaking down the year in gambling that was with my Top 10 gambling stories in North America, both the United States and Canada. I'll start here with numbers 6-10 and come back tomorrow with the top 5 stories. 

10. The rise of Sweepstake Casinos

Until 2024 few people heard of sweepstake casinos but in recent months it has been all over the news. Sweepstakes Casinos are considered “free to play” casinos but in reality they aren’t. Two of the biggest Sweepstakes casinos are Stake.us and Chumbacasino.com. Both offer two types of coins - virtual coins and sweeps coins. Virtual coins have no value but sweeps coins can be exchanged for money or gift cards. This is achieved by buying credits and exchanging those credits for sweeps coins. Think of any online casino where a player can play in the demo mode and only win meaningless credits for self bragging rights, or they can play for real money and win money.

The rise in popularity of these casinos has caused anger and concern by both real casino operators and the state governments. Because the sweeps casinos aren’t recognized as real casinos they pay no license fees, taxes or follow any set rules on things like problem gambling. As such, the American Gaming Association stated that these casinos are circumventing the requirements of a real casino and hence are breaking the law. And states have noticed it too. Michigan, Connecticut, Delaware and Ohio all issued cease and desist orders against Sweepstake casino companies although there is no indication that the companies have stopped operating in those states.

So just how big is the Sweepstake casino market? According to a report from Eilers & Krajicek, Sweepstakes casinos had revenue of over $3 billion worldwide in 2022 and it is estimated in 2024 that number will be closer to $4.5 billion. In the United States, approximately 55 million people play at sweepstakes casinos with Chumba holding over 90% of the market share. The market itself is valued at close to $100 million and is expected to rise to almost $150 million by 2023. With those types of figures not only is the AGA concerned that they are getting away with murder but there is also a concern about money laundering which is always an issue when there is a huge pile of money with no real audit trail.

To try and deal with the issue both sides have launched campaigns to get Sweepstakes Casinos banned or recognized as legal. The National Council of Legislators from Gaming States, an organization that describes itself as independent members of committees responsible for the regulation of gaming in their state legislative houses, wants sweepstakes casinos banned with a fine of up to $100,000 for any company that refuses to stop offering the product, while Sweepstake casino operators launched a group called the Social and Promotional Gaming Association to insist that what they are doing is legal and socially responsible. To prove it the group provided a code of conduct that all sweepstake casinos must follow which includes a minimum age limit of 18 years and use verification tools to ensure everyone is over 18 (even though most states only allow gambling at the age of 21) and they have rules related to KYC, anti money laundering and geolocation tools.

It is notable that some states including New Jersey as well as the province of Ontario have not made any statement relating to the legality of sweepstakes casinos but instead asked them to apply for a license which will eliminate any question as to whether they are legal.

9. Closing of two iconic Las Vegas Casinos

Many baby boomers and Gen-X will recall going to Las Vegas and seeing the heart of the strip being the old favorites like Caesars Palace, the Flamingo, the Dunes and two new casinos with shows taking place on the front of the casinos. Treasure Island put on a regular pirate show for anybody walking by and The Mirage hotel had an active volcano that went off every half hour. Steve Wynn bought the land for the Mirage in 1986 and the hotel was completed in 1989. It was a true marvel and 5 star hotel. It had a tropical rainforest, a habitat for Tigers at the front entrance that housed tigers used by Siegfried and Roy and the first Cirque de Soleil show, a tribute to the Beatles which was shown until it finally closed.

The hotel was first owned by Wynn but sold to MGM and later to Vici properties. Yet despite all its appeal, the hotel was never able to keep pace with Caesars Palace or other new iconic hotels like Bellagio or Paris and was deemed to be in need of a makeover. Consequently, MGM said it was starting to become a money pit so in 2019 when Hard Rock International expressed an interest in purchasing the hotel and making it into a Hard Rock casino, MGM couldn’t refuse. The deal was completed in 2022 for just over $1 billion. In 2024 the news came out that the Mirage was officially closing and would be replaced as a Hard Rock with the iconic guitar shaped hotel tower like other Seminole Hard Rock hotels. To do so, the Seminoles said that the volcano.

The Mirage officially closed in July 2024 with a large closing ceremony. Las Vegas rules also required that the accumulated $1.6 million progressive slot jackpots had to be paid so for 3 days people lined up outside the Mirage doors anxious to win the jackpots and the final jackpot was paid on July 11th.

Along with the Mirage, a more traditional, but well appreciated hotel near the airport was closed and demolished. The Tropicana was built in 1957 and for a time was considered a major luxury hotel at the end of the strip. It appealed to people who didn’t want to be right at the heart of the strip and to others who found it an easy to walk from the airport to the hotel. The hotel featured top entertainment including Sammy Davis Jr. who had a regular show there most evenings until his retirement along with other traditional acts. Eventually the Tropicana started to show its age so in the 1970s and 1980s it underwent many transformations and ownership changes, the last owners of the Tropicana was Bally’s. The Tropicana got a new lease on life in the 1990s when MGM used that part of the strip to develop hotels aimed at families. The MGM Grand was transformed and Park MGM (the only non-smoking hotel in Vegas), New York, New York, Mandalay Bay, the Excalibur and the Luxor were all built in the same vicinity. Moreover T-Mobile arena was nearby. Suddenly the hotel which seemed to be miles from the real action spots of Vegas was in a very desirable spot.

By all accounts Bally’s considered revamping the hotel again until the Oakland A’s announced they were moving to Las Vegas and the city was looking for land to put up the baseball stadium. The Tropicana was the perfect spot being near the hockey arena and the airport and the offer made to Bally’s was too great to pass up. So, in April of 2024 the Tropicana closed for good and in October the towers were imploded.

Aside from the baseball stadium, a new Bally’s Resort casino is in the plans for the land.

8. Massive rise in crypto gambling

Probably one of the biggest stories of 2024 has been the incredible rise in value of cryptocurrencies. At the start of 2024 Bitcoin traded at around $42,500 and skyrocketed as high as $107,000 each before settling at its current level of amount $93,000. Ethereum was worth just over $2,200 each at the start of the year and rose to over $4,000 each before settling at its current value of about $3,400 and many other small cryptocurrencies like Solana, Cardano, Ripple and DOGE saw increases of almost 400% from the start of the year. The rise seems to be mostly attributable to Donald Trump’s election win and his announcement that he plans to make the United States the Cryptocurrency capital of the world. His appointment of Elon Musk to the new DOGE portfolio and his hiring of Cardano founder and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson as an advisor also made many realize that there is money to be made with crypto.

As a result of the meteoric rise there has also been a major change when it comes to betting with crypto. Most offshore gambling companies including Pinnacle Sports, BetOnline, Heritage Sports etc. not only allow people to deposit and withdraw with cryptocurrency but encourage it, and several crypto only sites such as Nitrobetting, BC.Game, and Cloudbet have seen massive increases in customer signups and interest in betting with cryptocurrency.

The reasons for the rise aside from the intrigue of winning a lot of cryptocurrency are the low fees associated with them and consequently better bonuses; the transparency of bets since every wager is viewable on the blockchain; instant payouts with transfers to a crypto wallet; the ability to hide wins from the government and thus avoiding taxes; and of course the investment opportunity. Social media is covered with stories about people who bet on a sports future with say 0.1 BTC won a 10/1 bet and cashed out 1 BTC. And if the bet was made when BTC was trading at $50,000 and cashed when BTC was $100,000 then the bettor would have actually made double what he expected.

The question is whether this will continue? The answer seems to be yes which was brought into focus when FanDuel founders Nigel Eccles and Rob Jones launched a crypto only gambling site in 2024 called BetHog. BetHog currently only accepts wagers from places where there are no set regulatory restrictions, meaning the U.S., Canada and UK are currently off limits, but its clear that Eccles sees crypto betting as the future and he has stated that BetHog, will eventually move into other markets including possibly the U.S. when all legal issues can be worked out.

7. Ontario petition to allow out of province wagering into its pools

When Ontario launched its open online gambling market in April 2022, DraftKings and FanDuel sent letters to Ontario residents letting them know that they will no longer be able to play Daily Fantasy Sports. The reason the companies made this decision is that the Ontario rules state that all wagering must take place in Ontario and any pooling had to contain only Ontario residents. Consequently, neither company saw any way to have a viable DFS market with a population of only 15 million people, 11 million legally over the minimum gambling age of 19. Since DFS was removed there have been calls by DFS bettors and the Fantasy Sports Association to find a way to legalize it since Ontario was one of the most lucrative markets for both sites. Along with DFS, poker sites have noticed that most tables are empty for the same reason. Currently only PokerStars, GGPoker, 888 Gaming, Party Poker and BetMGM offer the product in Ontario, but as can be expected the usual tables and tournaments one was used to seeing at a site like PokerStars just don’t exist in a relatively small market.

Consequently, in January 2024 the Ontario government sent a letter to the Ontario court of appeals with the following question:

“Would legal online gaming and sports betting remain lawful under the Criminal Code if its users were permitted to participate in games and betting involving individuals outside of Canada? If not, to what extent?”

Rather than a yes or no response they were hoping the Ontario courts would say something like Yes it is legal so they could immediately open the market to outside jurisdictions, or No, however.. thus providing a way that this request could be legally attained.

The provinces of B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces expressed their opposition to the proposal at the hearing while Alberta and Quebec stayed silent because they plan to follow Ontario’s model of an open gambling market in the near future and will have the same issues as Ontario of getting enough liquidity to make DFS and poker sustainable. For its part, the Ontario government said it has no issue leaving out the provinces who oppose the initiative from betting into Ontario pools and only catering to other countries that want it to happen.

There is also some rumblings that Ontario spoke with some U.S. states about allowing their bettors to play poker and/or DFS with Ontario and that in itself could be crucial since the six U.S. states that currently offer online poker (Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Michigan) are seeing very low volume so they will be quite interested in the outcome of the Ontario ruling to see if it’s worthwhile asking the U.S. courts to allow them to mingle pools with say PokerStars international which would provide quite a bit of volume and far greater profits.

On November 28th the courts concluded three days of arguments and it is up to the five-judge panel to give a ruling. By all accounts the courts were quite interested in the arguments and a final ruling will be made sometime in 2025.

6. NCAA Petition to block wagering on player props

While the NCAA has given up its battle to stop wagering on its games, it has turned its focus to player props. The NCAA was the last holdout with regards to promoting betting on its league but it still warns players and college students not to bet on games or they could face suspension. But while they are no longer asking states to block wagering on the outcome of games the league says that player props are more concerning because players are being regularly harassed by bettors who believe the players may have done something that caused them to lose their bets. They are also concerned that because the vast majority of players won’t ever make it to the big leagues there is more incentive by those players to cheat and receive a kickback to help big bettors win and that is far easier with player props than on a game itself. There’s no way of proving, for example, that an NCAA football player dropped a pass on purpose or an NCAA basketball player missed his last free throw to go under the points set up for him or her in the prop.

Consequently Charlie Baker, President of the NCAA in March asked states to ban college props and more recently he called for a federal ban on college props and some states have agreed while others declined saying its an overstep. Colorado, Arizona, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Oregon instituted bans on college props when they set the rules for sports betting and Illinois, Connecticut and Iowa don’t allow prop betting on in-state games. Maryland, Ohio, Vermont and Louisiana listened to Baker’s plea and banned prop betting on college sports altogether. The remaining 20 plus states with legal sports betting, however, still allow betting on college props and because they are a major money maker it doesn’t appear the books have any plans to change unless forced to by a federal ban. Baker claims that as many as 15% of college players are regularly harassed by sports bettors and in a statement to a Senate Judiciary Committee he stated:

"We believe that when bettors can't gamble on college athletes' individual performances, they're far less likely to attempt to scrutinize, coerce or harass student-athletes”… They get demands for money from unhappy bettors for trivial things that don't impact the result on the field, and many have received death threats from bettors, and they also receive other, in-person threats and accusations directed at them while they're leaving or coming onto the field of play."

Baker also suggested that they are being coerced by other people at school to help them win money by getting inside information to help pay for tuition.

The question is whether the feds will play ball. There is some belief that Baker plans to run for Congress and one of his goals in doing so will be to get prop betting on college sports banned. It is notable that this all occurred when an investigation was announced it was launching an investigation into a Temple basketball player for suspected point shaving.

Check out the top 5 gambling stories in North America in Part 2 of this series here.

Read insights from Hartley Henderson every week here at OSGA and check out Hartley's RUMOR MILL!