Recent weeks have seen some not-so-great developments for fans of online poker in New York, with two sweepstakes poker sites exiting the state, severely reducing the number of safe options available to New Yorkers.
The sites in question are Global Poker, perhaps the longest-standing and best-known sweeps-based poker operator, and Clubs Poker, a fairly recent addition to the sweepstakes poker scene.
With nearly 20 million residents, New York is a very attractive market for gaming operators. However, both Clubs and Global have decided to withdraw from the state following recent legislative developments, which saw a couple of bills targeting sweepstakes introduced in the legislative session. However, Global Poker will continue to offer free-play games via its Gold Coin currency which cannot be redeemed for real money prizes.
Complying With State Legislations
Global Poker is a brand owned by VGW, an Australia-based company that also operates brands like Chumba Casino and Luckyland Slots. All of these sites are based on the sweepstakes model, where players don’t make any real money deposits or withdrawals. Instead, there is an in-between layer of Sweeps Coins, which can be exchanged for real money prizes.
When it comes to sweepstakes poker, Global Poker is one of the sites that paved the way in the United States, and for many years, it operated without any significant legal challenges.
Lately, however, we’ve seen a number of states turn their eyes toward sweepstakes operators, introducing legislative changes aimed specifically at putting an end to their business model. New York is one such state.
Although the actual bill that would outlaw sweepstakes poker and casinos is still being considered, VGW made an executive decision to preemptively leave the market. This is in line with the company’s wider policy, which saw them exit several other states under similar circumstances, including Montana, Michigan, Delaware, Idaho, Nevada, Washington, and Connecticut.
Clubs Poker Out Without Much Noise
While VGW came out with a statement to address its decision to leave the Empire State, Clubs Poker made its move in silence. The operator amended its terms and conditions and notified its New York-based customers, but it hasn’t done much beyond that.
It is worth noting that Stake Poker withdrew from New York even earlier, leaving players in the state with almost no trustworthy options. The newly launched ClubWPT Gold is the only remaining sweeps operator in the state, but they might not hang around for a long time, either.
When and if ClubWPT Gold pulls out, the players will once more have the option between no online poker at all and offshore, completely unregulated sites. Alternatively, there are social poker sites like PlayWSOP that don’t offer any type of real money prizes, and as mentioned previously, free-play Gold Coin games will still be available at Global Poker.
As far as fully licensed and regulated New York online poker is concerned, that seems to be at least a couple of years down the line, despite neighboring states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania offering all forms of completely legal online gambling.
We can only hope that these efforts to put a stop to sweepstakes operations are a prelude of sorts to an actual bill that would bring legal online poker to the Empire State.
This would be a massive development for the US online poker market, with New York being the fourth most-populated state, but, as we have seen time and time again in the past, these things tend to take a long time, often leaving fans of the game between the proverbial rock and the hard place.
