And Then There Were Four

Beginning today, Pennsylvania is officially an active participant in the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA).

For the first time in the history of regulated online poker in the United States, there are four active US states that are participating members of the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA). Pennsylvania today joins New Jersey, Nevada, and Michigan as states whose players can be pooled together for online tournament and cash-game play, as soon as licensed platforms serving two or more of those states launch software updates allowing the player pooling.

Pennsylvania’s addition to MSIGA will be closely monitored. The next few months will provide the best measure yet on exactly how much an increase in populace (and liquidity) will translate in percentage terms to a larger jump in revenue. Pennsylvanie is the most populous state yet to become an active part of MSIGA, which should result in increases for all four states, though most notably in the Keystone State.

Though today’s MSIGA kickoff for Pennsylvania play includes only the MGM platforms BetMGM and PA Borgata Online, access to PokerStars US, Rush Street Interactive, and WSOP.com should take place in the near future. pending final state testing and approval. In a statement released by the office of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, it’s noted that the state already has an estimated 150.000 online-poker players, and that with Pennylvania’s addition, more than 38 million Americans now reside in active MSIGA states.

Still waiting on other states

While there are only four active MSIGA states, there are two other participating MSIGA members, West Virginia and Delaware. Delaware previously offered active online-pojer pooling, though that stopped at the end of 2023 when the state switched its sole online-gambling provider from 888 to Rush Street Interactive.

Rush Street Interactive purchased Phil Galfond’s Run It Once a couple of years ago and will be using that platform to power its BetRiversPoker site in Pennsylvania, but whether that will ever be offered in Delaware remains unclear. And then there’s West Virginia, where the bottleneck appears to be the difficulty in hammering out an online-gambling partnership between established online operators and any of the few West Virginia lamd-based casinos.

It’ll take time. I figure Delaware will be on hiatus for another five years at the least, while it’ll be two years after the approval of any casino/software platform partnershps for MSIGA-approved online-poker pooling to come to fruition. As evidenced by both Michigan and Pennsylvania, not to mention the original quagmire of getting MSIGA up and running, it seems to take two years or more for a state to go from beginning to embrace player pooling to getting it up and running. The same gos for other states ho have or could approve online poker. The same laborious process will apply, which means the MSIGA tally of four actively pooling states will be the working number for some time to come.

My best prediction for when a fifth state joins the active MSIGA pool? Let’s call it 2028.