California introduces amended online poker bill
Poker-only bill to face Senate committee hearing on 12 June.
California politicians have amended their egaming bill in an attempt to appease the state’s tribes and regulate online poker to the Golden State this year.
Following a number of influential tribal groups and card rooms voicing their opposition to SB 1463 the bill’s sponsors, Senators Roderick Wright and Darrell Steinberg, removed the provision to allow non-poker games after two years and limited licence applicants to casinos and card rooms which already offer poker.
The bill, which faces a Senate committee hearing on 12 June, also includes amendments regarding tribal sovereignty, the length of the licence and the up-front fee payable by licensees.
Several tribes, including the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians, and associations, such as the California Tribal Business Alliance, wrote to the Senators in April to express their grievances with the original bill. The tribes’ two biggest criticisms were that it would have authorised online games other than poker after two years and that businesses not currently offering poker could have applied for a licence.
Under the amended bill, applicants must have been in “good standing” with the California Gambling Control Commission (CGCC) for at least three years.
Eligible licence applicants can also form new subsidiaries, joint ventures or consortia with other gambling businesses, but the latter do not need to have existed for three years. There is also no limit on the number of intrastate sites that licensees may operate.
A clause, which would have obliged tribes to waive their sovereignty to hold an online poker licence, has now been replaced by one requiring them to do so only for the application process “and for no other purpose”.
The CGCC can now only renegotiate the US$30m licence fee after five years, rather than three, but licences will now last for five years as opposed to 10. The fee, to be credited against site revenue taxes, would be for the first five years instead of three. The fee is also no longer non-refundable.
The CGCC would now issue licences instead of the state’s Department of Justice and, if the amended bill is passed, regulations to implement it would have to be completed within 120 days, as opposed to the 12 months originally stipulated.