The New Hampshire Senate approved last week a bill that if signed into law, would authorize the construction of two casinos within the state’s borders. Senators passed the proposed legislation in a 13-10 vote.
The bill was considered in the Senate the week before and was then referred to the Finance Committee where it got an equal number of positive and negative votes. Sponsored by Sen. Lou D’Allesandro, SB 242 will now have to be considered by the House, which has a long history of rejecting casino efforts.
The state has seen multiple pushes for the legalization of casino gambling, but none of those have been successful so far. It has been the House exactly that has proved to be the biggest stumbling block over the years. It is still too early to predict how House Representatives would react to the new casino bill, but the legislative piece would probably be given some hard time.
However, if the effort succeeds eventually , it will pave the way for the construction of two casinos – a Category 1 one with between 80 and 160 table games and up to 3,500 slot machines, and a Category 2 one with between 25 and 80 table games and up to 1,500 slot machines. The the amount of $80 million is to be invested in the first casino, while the second is expected to cost around $40 million.
Revenue from the facilities will be contributed to support financially host communities and surrounding areas. It is believed that once fully operational, the two gambling venues could generate up to $200 million during their first full year. If the bill is passed without any considerable delays, the casinos could open doors in 2021.
New Hampshire may expand its gambling industry in another direction, as three House of Representatives members introduced an online gambling bill early this year. Generally speaking, HB 562 does not call for the legalization and regulation of Internet gambling options, but only removes said options from the list of illegal ones. In other words, if the bill is approved in this form, this would mean that local players would be able to play online and this would not be considered illegal. However, they would do that at their own risk as there would not be any regulations to protect them from murky iGaming operations.
