Delaware deadline for gambling vendors is imminent
News on 12 Mar 2013
News on 12 Mar 2013
In the state of Delaware, which has legalised online gambling and hopes to have operations up and running by September 30, would-be vendors are racing to get their proposals in by Friday’s deadline.
On Monday Delaware Lottery Director Vernon Kirk explained the next steps to the publication Newsworks, noting that the project was no easy task and would possibly have to deal with unforeseen problems “on the fly’ as it moved toward the target operational date.
Kirk noted that the legalisation bill included online sports betting as well as casino and poker action, although he said that the sports betting element may be introduced later due to legal considerations.
“Since [under PASPA] Delaware can only do parlay wagering on professional football, and given our target date for production, we see this component as perhaps a later piece of our iGaming puzzle,” the director said.
Once all the proposals are in and the cut-off date has passed, the lottery will begin hearing presentations and hosting meetings to hammer out the specific details.
“There will be a long series of many meetings with the vendors and ourselves and the three casinos,” said Kirk.
“Designing what it’s going to look like, creating the software that will actually run everything, integrating all the various components of it, the actual hosting of it, the back office portions of it, the game content, the geo-location, making sure the players are in-state, the ID identification, the payment processing, all of these will be developed,” Kirk explained.
He acknowledged New Jersey’s recent legalisation law, but said that he did not see the state as a rival “…since their law also requires players to physically be in the same state where the games are hosted.”
Instead of competing with one another, states where legalisation has been achieved should work together, he said.
“There are considerations for creating compacts between various states where Internet gaming is legal and then sharing customers. Whether New Jersey would want to compact with us or not is another story,” he commented.
