NY Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, who heads the Assembly Racing & Wagering Committee, has reintroduced his online poker bill for 2016.
Full text here.
Track bill here.
TL;DR: Good to see the bill in play, but lots of space between this and passage.
I haven't gone line-by-line but I'm assuming the bill is similar or identical to bills introduced by Pretlow in past sessions (along with Sen. Bonacic on the Senate side).
New York is frequently mentioned as a state with potential to regulate online poker in the near-term. That's a reasonable assessment insomuch that there's demand and some political groundwork has been laid (
most recently: hearings in September).
On the other hand, the dust around land-based expansion has yet to settle and it's not clear where the state's various stakeholders will land on online poker / what demands they'll make. And the amount of money involved in poker-only is quite a bit lower than poker + casino. Finally, Pretlow has - in the recent past - sounded skeptical notes about regulating online poker and the technology underpinning successful regulation (geolocation etc).
Our NY online poker coverage is here.
I suspect we'll see hearings this year and rumbling of a floor vote.
One interesting wrinkle is the fact that DFS will almost certainly be making its way through the NY Leg this year and will have to pass through Pretlow and Bonacic in almost any reasonable scenario. There could be meaningful interplay between poker and DFS as a result (e.g., rolled up into single bill)
