Delaware Moves to Wider Sports Betting As States Look to Exercise Newly Granted Discretion

Delaware will begin allowing single-game sports betting at three casinos starting June 5, the state announced on Thursday. The move makes Delaware only the second state to allow single-game bets and represents the latest result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month to strike down a 26-year-old law that had banned sports wagering in most states.

“Delaware will launch a full-scale sports gaming operation at all three casinos in the state—Delaware Park, Dover Downs Hotel & Casino, and Harrington Raceway & Casino,” reads a post on the state’s official Web site. “Betting offered Tuesday will include single-game and championship wagering on professional baseball, football, hockey, basketball, soccer, golf, and auto racing.” Currently, Montana, Nevada, and Oregon, along with Delaware, permit sports betting, with Nevada also allowing single-game bets.

Delaware officials acted following a May 14 ruling by the high court that invalidated the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992. That law prevented most states from legalizing sports betting. Now, a liberalized federal stance toward this form of gambling has at least some states looking at authorizing wagers on sports events. In many cases, the lure is the revenue that could flow into state coffers from taxation and additional tourism.

“Delaware has all necessary legal and regulatory authority to move forward with a full-scale sports gaming operation, and we look forward to next week’s launch,” said Governor John Carney, as quoted by the official post. “We’re hopeful that this will bring even more visitors into Delaware to see firsthand what our state has to offer.”

With companies ranging from payments processors to casinos to fantasy-sports sites looking to get in on the action in sports betting, the odds seem to favor a boom in this business, and soon. Now that each state can decide for itself, payments experts expect the action to be fast and furious for processors.

“The flood gates are going to open,” says Thad Peterson, a senior analyst at financial-services consultancy Aite Group LLC in Boston. In particular, state legislatures will quickly fall in line when they tote up the potential tax revenue they can glean from legal sports wagering, he says. “The pressure will be on the states,” he says. “It could move very quickly.”

How many states will ultimately legalize sports betting is anybody’s guess, but Eilers and Krejcik Gaming, a Santa Ana, Calif.-based research firm that follows the business, figures 32 states will have allowed regulated sports wagering by 2023. Wagers will total to about $90 billion annually by that time, the firm forecasts.

Meanwhile, payments processors with existing operations that support gaming in other parts of the world are looking with keen anticipation at the U.S. market in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision. “We think the potential is tremendous,” says Neil Erlick, executive vice president for business development at Paysafe Holdings UK Ltd., a London-based payments provider whose Skrill and Neteller units have long offered processing for legal bets.

In the United States, Paysafe in April agreed to acquire the Westlake Village, Calif.-based processor iPayment Holdings Inc. on undisclosed terms. That deal followed Paysafe’s $470-million acquisition in 2017 of Merchants’ Choice Payment Solutions, a Shenandoah, Texas-based processor.