States Up the Ante in Bid to Lure Other States’ Bettors

Cash-hungry states have long tried to poach business from one another. Now many are stepping up their efforts to lure gamblers from their neighbors to their growing ranks of slot machines, leaving states like Delaware, which embraced gambling early, struggling to keep up in what has become a feverish one-armed-bandit arms race. The rapid expansion of gambling, as recession-racked states have searched for new sources of money, has transformed the industry. States that once enjoyed near-monopolies on gambling — including Delaware, which legalized slotlike machines at its racetracks in 1994, and New Jersey, which opened the nation’s first casinos outside of Nevada in 1978 — have been suffering the most in the new casino-dotted national landscape.

Gov. Jack Markell (D-DE) signed a law that could make Delaware the first state to offer Internet gambling — giving its residents the chance to bet on video lottery games and online versions of games like poker, blackjack and roulette without leaving their homes.