Massachusetts online gambling latest

The rhetoric on a proposal to legalise online gambling operated through Massachusetts land casinos ramped up this week with an article in the Sun Chronicle, which interviewed a senior member of the state Senate and a spokesman for a land casino operator licensed in the state.

Republican leader in the Senate, Sen. Bruce Tarr, who is driving the new initiative, told the Sun Chronicle:

“Our state has chosen to pursue casino gaming, and is licensing operators to enter a fiercely competitive national market that is much more fully developed in other states.

“Allowing those we are counting on to produce revenue for Massachusetts and our cities and towns to conduct online gaming will give them a competitive advantage, and increase their chances of success. That success, in turn, can deliver substantial benefits through funding for our spending priorities and our budgets.”

A spokesman for Penn National Gaming, the owners of the Plainridge land casino licensed for Massachusetts operations, said it might be interested in online gambling.

“We support the authorization of Internet gaming to the extent it protects the economic investment the brick-and-mortar casinos have made in the state and the jobs we’ve created,” Eric Schippers said. “Other states have addressed this through legislation that would restrict Internet gaming to only those existing licensed casino operators in the state.”

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