Pessimistic view of U.S. online gambling

The latest Morgan Stanley assessment of the US online gambling market created a few shivers Tuesday, slashing the analyst’s estimate of the potential U.S. Internet gambling market by nearly half to $2.7 billion by 2020.

The firm attributed its more cautious estimates to slow developments and legislative uncertainty.

The firm’s original estimate was $5 billion by 2020, although Morgan Stanley appears confident that by that date 15 US states will have legalised online gambling.

The report is pessimistic on positive new developments in 2015, predicting that there will be no further state legalisations of online gambling this year, but that California and Pennsylvania may manage to achieve legalisation in 2016 and a roll out in 2017, probably followed by New York and possibly Illinois around 2018.

A federal ban on online gambling is unlikely this year, but remains a risk, and one that is growing the analyst points out.

However, the report does suggest that the legalisation of online gambling is ultimately inevitable, and that further state legalisations will create a tipping point, encouraging other states to follow suit.

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