Gambling is a big deal in the world. People love to gamble. Some suffer for it, when they get addicted, lose all their money and even people in their lives. Some get rich off it and still suffer, by spending it all and indebting themselves. Others, well, they just enjoy gambling and sometimes they win big or lose a little. Taking gambling to the extreme is inadvisable, just as taking anything to the extreme can have its own consequences.
Sports betting is similar, as it is also gambling, albeit with a bit more information. With that in mind, sports betting in the United States has been illegal for a long time, at least in most states outside Nevada. That changed recently and with the PASPA Act being found unconstitutional with 6 votes to 3, many states have started looking at legalizing sports betting. Illinois is one of them.
The Illinois Gambling Expansion – Why it’s Happened
Gambling is popular in the United States. Illinois already has 10 really large casinos. They bring in lots of revenue. With a turn towards online gambling and sports betting which started happening in the 2010s and specifically, for sports betting in the United States, in 2018, things started changing. Illinois wanted in on the change, especially because of sports betting being legalized. Thus the Illinois Gambling Expansion came to be, or rather, the Senate Bill 690. It landed on the governor’s desk in June of 2019 and it is going to add 6 new casinos to Illinois and a mega-casino to Chicago, as well as other minor details.
The Gambling Expansion – What Can We Expect to See
One of the most important things about the Illinois Gambling Expansion is that with it, sports betting will be legalized in the state. That means that you can bet on sports, all of them, in various sports arenas throughout the state, as well as most casinos, if not all of them, as well as bet online. This will make sports betting in Illinois up to date with the faster-adopting states.
But other than that, the bill allows Illinois to issue 6 new licenses for casinos in Chicago, Rockford, Waukegan and Danville. Williamson County will get a casino and one of the six towns in Cook County, Worth, Rich, Bremen, Thornton, Bloom, Calumet. The casino in Chicago will obviously be the largest one, allowing up to 4,000 job positions. That is a lot, compared to the current casinos which have up to 1,200 employees. The casinos in the cities and Cook County will be allowed 2,000 positions while the one in Williamson County will get 1,200 positions.
Casinos which had over 1,000 and up to 1,200 job positions, the 10 existing ones, will be able to expand their numbers to 2,000. The thing is, only 2 of the 10 casinos meet the necessary employee number requirements, at the moment.
The revenue expected from such an expansion would be around 2.4 billion dollars, one time and an annual revenue of 440 million dollars.
Illinois will be getting new casinos in major cities and a couple in the Williamson and Cook County. If you like gambling and sports betting, then this is great news. Remember, however, to gamble responsibly, new casino or otherwise.