Another year, another failed online poker bill in California. Frankly, this is getting boring. I didn’t really want to report on this, as it is just the same thing year in and year out, but I suppose people should know what’s going on.
Last week, California Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer conceded that time as run out for State Assembly Bill AB 2291 for the 2013-2014 legislative session, which would have legalized and regulated poker in the Golden State. Similarly, State Senator Lou Correa, who has fought for poker the last several years, said that there is not enough time during this legislative session to move forward with his Senate Bill SB 1366.
As usual, there are too many stakeholders who not just want a piece of the action, but want it solely on their terms. For many, it is their way or the highway. Card rooms, racinos, Native American tribes, they all want it how they want it. This go-around, there seems to be two main problems upon which all the parties could not agree. The first is whether or not race tracks should be allowed to operate poker rooms, the second is the possibility of a “bad actor” clause. This bad actor clause would shut out any online poker operators which continue to offer online poker to Californians after 2006, the year the infamous Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was passed.
Many feel that the bad actor clause was a way to keep PokerStars out of the California market. As we all know, PokerStars is the giant of the online poker industry; if they were to be able to establish a new online poker room in a U.S. regulated market, it is expected that players would flock to it. Some of its potential competitors would no doubt love to keep the big dog out.
Not everyone wanted to bar PokerStars, though. While many tribes wanted the bad actor clause, the powerful Morongo tribe and California’s three largest card clubs agreed to partner with PokerStars to offer online poker. Rather than have a bad actor clause, they want each potential licensee to be evaluated by state regulators on its own merit.
Then there is the recent purchase of PokerStars’ parent company by Canada-based Amaya Gaming. Because Amaya Gaming did not operate in California after 2006, it is thought that it would be able to get the green light from regulators, thus paving the way for PokerStars’ entry. Thus, in PokerStars’ case, a bad actor clause would not matter. Were that the situation, it would clearly still matter for other possible operators.
PokerStars, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, the Commerce Club, the Bicycle Casino, and the Hawaiian Gardens Casino issued a joint statement to the media about the latest poker legislation failure. In the statement, Morongo Tribal Chairman Robert Martin said:
We have been working on this issue for five years now and while we were optimistic that a suitable bill would move forward in 2014, we’re in this for the long haul and we’d rather do it right than have a bad bill. Clearly the issues surrounding the latest bills that sought to unconstitutionally limit competition, place prohibitions on race tracks, and rewrite longstanding, successful state policy regarding California’s oversight of gaming proved insurmountable for this session. We will continue to work with our partners, legislators, state regulators and other California tribes on developing future iPoker legislation that meets constitutional tests and provides much needed consumer protections to California’s 2 million online poker players.
