Lawmakers from Virginia, Ohio and Massachusetts used an iDevelopment & Economic Association roundtable to set out a familiar but unsettled case for legal online casino gaming: potential tax receipts and a regulated alternative to offshore play, weighed against concerns about gambling harm and pressure on land-based casinos.
John Pappas, iDEA’s state advocacy director and the roundtable moderator, said legislatures were beginning to form their 2027 priorities and that iGaming would be discussed in several states, according to SportsBettingDime. The three legislators discussed both legalization efforts and how online gaming could coexist with their states’ existing gambling sectors.
In Massachusetts, Rep. David K. Muradian Jr. argued that residents already participate through offshore or unregulated platforms. He said the choice was whether to leave that activity in an unregulated market or establish a taxed framework offering a safer route for consumers.
Muradian described iGaming as the next logical progression after sports betting, which he said had produced one of the country’s safest and most tightly regulated markets. He also said iGaming had been considered as one way to address a projected $4 billion revenue gap had a ballot initiative to reduce the state income-tax rate from 5% to 4% succeeded. The initiative failed.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s own February research snapshot offers a qualification to the case for regulation. It said legalizing a new gambling activity would probably increase participation and related harms, with young people and socio-economically disadvantaged groups disproportionately affected. But the commission-commissioned study also found that a regulated market could address existing problems including underage gambling, unprotected gambling and unregulated advertising. It noted limited scientific evidence on iGaming risks in isolation and on the effects of introducing it in a mature market.
Ohio Rep. Brian Stewart said legislators’ openness to iGaming was driven largely by revenue potential. Studies had put annual tax receipts above $400 million once a market matured, he said, and he suggested that aggressive taxation could help support a broader aim among some lawmakers of eliminating the state income tax.
That estimate sits alongside iDEA’s May 2025 testimony on Ohio Senate Bill 197, which would authorize internet gaming. The association projected roughly $488.6 million in annual revenue under an effective tax rate comparable with Michigan’s 28% top rate. It warned that SB 197’s proposed 36% or 40% rates, along with its $50 million master-license fee, could make a competitive and consumer-friendly market harder to establish.
In that testimony, iDEA argued that legalization would bring a presently accessible offshore market into a licensed, taxed and accountable system. It said Ohio’s online-sports-betting regulatory framework and technological infrastructure could provide a foundation for iGaming, while identifying fairness, data protection and responsible-gambling standards as benefits of a regulated model.
Virginia Sen. Jeremy S. McPike took a more cautious position. He said the state must consider whether online gaming would cannibalize brick-and-mortar casino revenue, and that revenue forecasts should be conservative because it remains difficult to judge how the market would develop in Virginia.
That concern has been aired in Virginia’s legislative review. A state report recorded testimony that iGaming could reduce land-based gaming revenue by about 15% to 16%, while also noting projections of $5.3 billion in additional taxable revenue over five years. The report said a previous proposal, HB 2171 and its companion SB 827, would have authorized lottery-regulated internet gaming but did not pass.
As reported in September, Virginia’s earlier Richmond roundtable also brought operators and public-health experts together over stronger responsible-gambling safeguards before another 2027 casino debate. The legislative report recorded a 1,500% rise in problem-gambling helpline calls and a 223% increase in intakes between 2019 and 2024, underscoring the consumer-protection questions alongside the revenue debate.
Pappas pointed to New Jersey casinos’ record-breaking 2025 revenue and their pace to exceed it this year as evidence that online and retail gambling can coexist. iDEA made a similar argument in its Ohio filing, citing Pennsylvania data that it said showed retail slots and table-game revenues rose after iGaming launched there in July 2019.
