Gov. Wes Moore opened the 2026 legislative year with a frank admission: Maryland was staring down a $1.5 billion structural shortfall, and the FY2027 budget would be a low-growth exercise in triage. No new taxes. Painful cuts. A lot of difficult conversations in Annapolis. And yet sitting right there in the policy drawer, unlocked and untouched, was a revenue source that New Jersey and Pennsylvania had already used to transform their fiscal pictures: a legal, regulated online casino market.
Neither Del. Vanessa Atterbeary’s House bill nor Sen. Ron Watson’s Senate companion got a committee vote in the 2025 session. Both died when they missed the crossover deadline. Two sessions, two failures, a cumulative estimate of several hundred million dollars in foregone annual tax revenue. And a General Assembly that still can’t get the conversation past committee walls.
The pattern looks almost identical 1,500 miles southwest. Texas ran its 89th Legislature through a full session in 2025 without a single casino or online gambling bill surviving the Senate. Lt. Gov.r Dan Patrick has blocked gambling expansion in that chamber for years. The House has shown more appetite, but it doesn’t matter. The Senate is a wall. Residents searching for online casinos in Texas are navigating a patchwork of offshore platforms that operate entirely outside state regulation, with no consumer protection framework, no state oversight, and zero tax dollars flowing back to Austin. That’s not a niche problem. It’s a structural gap that legalization is specifically designed to close.
Maryland’s Budget Math and the iGaming Hole
The American Gaming Association’s State of the States 2026 report, released in May, documented something that should have landed harder in Annapolis than it did: iGaming revenue surpassed commercial land-based casino revenue in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey for the first time in 2025. Pennsylvania’s online casino market alone brought in over $2.1 billion in gross gaming revenue that year. New Jersey topped $2.3 billion. Their tax takes from those figures are not trivial. Pennsylvania’s 36% effective iGaming tax rate means the commonwealth collected north of $750 million from online casino activity in a single year.
Maryland has six commercial casinos and a sports betting market that has contributed around $140 million in tax revenue since its December 2021 launch. That’s real money. But it’s a fraction of what a regulated online market could add. Legislative analysts pegged potential iGaming tax revenue for Maryland at somewhere between $150 million and $400 million annually, depending on the tax rate structure. Moore’s team was looking at a $1.5 billion hole. The math is not hard.
What killed the bills wasn’t math. It was the same coalition that’s blocked this in Annapolis before: the brick-and-mortar operators who own Maryland’s physical casinos and have lobbied aggressively against any online market they’d have to compete with. The Cordish Companies, which runs Live! Casino in Hanover, has been the most visible opponent. Their argument is that iGaming cannibalizes floor revenue without replacing it dollar for dollar in jobs or economic activity. That argument has a data problem. Pennsylvania’s land-based casinos have largely held their revenue. But it’s persuasive enough in committee to run out the clock on crossover deadlines.
Texas: The Senate as Permanent Veto
Texas operates under a structural constraint Maryland doesn’t face quite as acutely: the Legislature only meets every other year for 140 days. Miss a session, wait two years. The 89th Legislature wrapped in June 2025 with casino legalization going nowhere. A group of Texas House Republicans organized specifically to block gambling expansion, and even among the legislators who wanted movement, the Senate’s posture made passing anything through both chambers a fantasy.
Patrick’s position isn’t just procedural reluctance. He’s been explicit: gambling expansion in Texas is not something he’ll facilitate. Constitutional amendments require two-thirds supermajorities in both chambers plus a voter referendum, which means you need Patrick’s cooperation, and he’s made clear he won’t provide it. So the cycle repeats: House members file bills, generate hearings, attract industry lobbying money, and then watch the session end.
Meanwhile, Texans who want to gamble online are already doing it. They’re just doing it on platforms that no state agency has licensed, audited, or capped. A bipartisan coalition of all 50 state attorneys general wrote to the Justice Department flagging that offshore gaming platforms are capturing over $4 billion in annual tax revenue that would otherwise flow to states. And that’s a conservative estimate based on verifiable transaction data, according to a 2025 press release from the Connecticut Attorney General’s office representing the coalition. For Texas, a state with 30 million residents and no legal online gambling, the slice of that $4 billion that’s leaving Austin unregulated is substantial.
The ‘Public Health’ Counter-Argument
Opponents in both states reach for the same script: gambling expansion means addiction expansion, and the social costs outweigh the tax revenue. It’s not a dishonest argument. The evidence on problem gambling and legalization is genuinely mixed, and anyone pretending there’s no downside to broad online casino access isn’t being straight with you.
But the argument has a logical gap. Maryland residents and Texas residents are already gambling online. The offshore market isn’t theoretical. It’s operating right now, without the responsible gambling mandates, deposit limit tools, self-exclusion registries, or problem gambling funding requirements that come with state licensing. A regulated New Jersey operator must fund treatment programs, enforce self-exclusion lists, and advertise responsibly under Division of Gaming Enforcement oversight. An unlicensed offshore site has none of those obligations. The population most at risk isn’t protected by prohibition. They’re just unprotected.
New York is one state that’s threading this needle with some political creativity. A 2026 bill proposed earmarking iGaming tax revenue specifically for education funding. The same framing Maryland sponsors used when pitching the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. Tying casino revenue to education doesn’t make the public health concerns disappear, but it builds a political coalition that can survive a Senate floor fight in a way that generic ‘economic development’ framing usually can’t.
Two States, One Pattern, One Question
Here’s the thing: Maryland and Texas aren’t failing to legalize online casinos because their legislators don’t understand the revenue. The fiscal briefings are thorough. The Pennsylvania and New Jersey numbers are not secret. They’re stalling because the political cost of moving forward, measured in opposition from casino operators and social conservatives, still exceeds the political reward. And that calculation only changes when the public makes it change.
In Maryland, the next realistic window is the 2027 session, assuming no special session breakthrough. Moore’s budget situation isn’t getting easier. The structural deficit doesn’t close itself, and the legislature has already demonstrated it won’t raise income taxes or cut its way to balance without enormous pain. At some point, the argument for leaving iGaming revenue on the table collapses under its own weight.
In Texas, the 90th Legislature convenes in January 2027. If Patrick’s Senate posture shifts. Or if the chamber’s composition changes after the 2026 elections. Something could move. That’s a lot of ifs.
Until then, the residents of both states are the ones absorbing the cost of the stalemate. They’re playing on unregulated platforms. The tax dollars are flowing to offshore operators. And the budget gaps those dollars could fill remain open.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Maryland’s iGaming bills fail in 2025? Both Del. Atterbeary’s House bill and Sen. Watson’s Senate companion missed the crossover deadline in the 2025 session without receiving committee votes. Opposition from Maryland’s brick-and-mortar casino operators, particularly the Cordish Companies, was the primary factor in stalling floor consideration before the deadline expired.
How much tax revenue could Maryland collect from online casinos? Legislative analysts estimated between $150 million and $400 million annually, depending on the tax rate structure adopted. For context, Pennsylvania collects north of $750 million per year from online casino activity at its 36% effective tax rate, and its land-based casino floor revenue has not collapsed as operators feared it would.
Why is Texas harder to crack on gambling than most states? Texas requires a constitutional amendment to legalize casino gambling, which means two-thirds supermajorities in both chambers plus a statewide voter referendum. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick controls the Senate calendar and has consistently blocked gambling expansion, making the two-thirds threshold in that chamber effectively unreachable under the current alignment.
Are offshore online casinos legal for residents of Maryland or Texas? Neither state has legalized online casino gambling, and residents using offshore platforms operate in a legal grey area. Those platforms are unlicensed by any U.S. State regulator, carry no consumer protection obligations, and generate no tax revenue for either state. Federal law under the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act targets the financial transactions, not individual players directly, but the situation remains unresolved.
What would it take for either state to legalize in the next session? In Maryland, a governor’s office willing to put iGaming revenue front and center in budget negotiations and a House leadership structure that can move a bill past committee before crossover would be the minimum requirements. In Texas, either a change in Senate leadership posture or a constitutional amendment push with overwhelming House support and a public referendum campaign would be necessary. Neither is likely before 2027 at the earliest.
Play Responsibly
Gambling involves real risk. Never wager money you can’t afford to lose, and don’t treat gambling as a way to resolve financial pressure. If you or someone you know is struggling with problem gambling, visit BeGambleAware.org or call 1-800-GAMBLER.
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