Written by Sadonna | Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

An ironic turn of events has taken place in the world of online gambling. Over the past few months gamblers have been waiting patiently to see which state in the US will become the first to offer online gambling. New Jersey, Iowa and Nevada have been working to pass an online gambling bill but now it seems that Washington D.C. has beaten them to the punch.

A district law has been cleared by the congressional approval process. The law was created to allow online gambling for poker as well as betting on fantasy sports. D.C. is now the first city in the United States jurisdiction to allow this type of online gambling.

The idea of online gambling was first introduced by Councilman Michael Brown back in December as an amendment to a spending bill. There was a $175 million budget gap in that fiscal year and the council has now approved the bill. There was a thirty-day waiting period where Congress could act on the bill but that time period has ended.

The D.C. lottery will be running the online gambling operation and they will be creating an online poker site as well as games of chance. Betting on fantasy sports leagues will also be available. With the new addition of the online gambling options, the city is estimated to bring in $13 million in additional revenues in the 2014 fiscal year.

Brown stated in an interview with 630 WMAL News that since online gambling was already happening in the city they wanted to be able to earn the revenues instead of outside operators. Brown said this is one of the reasons that it was decided the law would be changed. The online gambling operations will be monitored by both the D.C. Lottery as well as the Charitable Games Control Board. Fees will be taken out of the revenues and given to the board. The fees would be money that would be going to companies outside of the city or even the country.

It seems almost humorous that Washington D.C. will be the first city to offer online gambling as many Senators and other government leaders have been so opposed to online gambling. Perhaps this is exactly what the country needs to see online gambling become available to all US citizens.

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