The USA and Canada are two of the biggest nations for gambling in the world. With so many people living in both countries, and having so many similarities between the two nations, it’s no wonder that gambling is so popular.
Some of the best casino sites in the world hope to attract players from USA and Canada, but not every one of them are able to offer services to their residents. The laws and rules for each country are much different, and each casino operator has to abide by those laws.
Similarly, players in each country have to abide by the laws if they want to play legally. Let’s take a look at the current status of gambling in the USA and Canada.
Gambling Status in the USA
The United States takes a very unique approach to all forms of gambling. As of 2018, the USA government allows each individual state to determine its own rules, regulations and laws regarding gambling.
This includes all forms of gambling, such as betting on sports, poker and casino gambling. It also goes for whether each state will offer retail, land-based casinos, sportsbooks and poker rooms, as well as whether they will allow online betting.
All states that offer gambling of some form obviously started with land-based casinos. Some states made rules to allow for casinos in certain locations of the state to be owned by private companies — such as Nevada and New Jersey. Other states allowed casinos to be built on, and run by, Native American tribes — such as Connecticut, Mississippi and Arizona.
Casino gambling is actually available in many states throughout the USA, but not nearly as many offer online casino gambling. In fact, only five states offer online casino gambling.
New Jersey was the first state to offer legal online casino gambling, back in 2013. They were followed by Pennsylvania (2019), West Virginia (2020), Michigan (2021) and Connecticut (2021).
As of 2018, the USA also gave each individual states the discretion to offer sports gambling. Many of the states quickly passed legislation to get legal sports betting on the books, though they certainly take dramatically different approaches to what is allowed and what isn’t, and how it must be done legally.
As of late 2021, there are nine states that offer only land-based sportsbooks taking bets in person. There is one other state that currently only offers land-based sportsbooks but has legislation pending to offer online sports betting.
Eleven states offer full mobile sports betting with various options of providers and bets. Two other states offer the same thing, but require people to sign up for accounts in person at a physical sportsbook location. Four other states allow mobile sports betting, but with limited options.
For those states that offer online gambling — whether it be casino or sports — operators are required to use geotracking software on their websites and through their mobile apps. The laws of the states require people to be physically located in the state at the time they want to place a wager.
This means that people who aren’t residents of New Jersey, for example, can legally place online sports wagers as long as they’re physically located in New Jersey. Likewise, residents of New Jersey can’t place online sports bets through their NJ accounts when they’re outside of the state.
Gambling Status in Canada
Canada takes a relatively similar approach to the USA, in that each of the 10 provinces have the authority to set their own gambling rules. Each of these provinces have different rules and different approaches
