Legal Gambling Age In Puerto Rico
- What Is The Legal Gambling Age In Puerto Rico
- Legal Gambling Age In Puerto Rico
- Legal Gambling Age In Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico, the small US territory located in the Caribbean, may soon begin offering legal sports betting. It comes at an interesting time, as many locals here are still recovering from Hurricane Maria. Both land-based sports betting in Puerto Rico is seriously being considered, but why?
Minimum Age to Gamble in United States of America. Below you will find the minimum legal age to gamble in various locations around the U.S., Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. In the 50 American states, some times you'll see a variance, this usually is due to Indian casinos having different age requirements in their casinos than state regulated. The legal age for gambling in Puerto Rico is 21 but at many hotels it's just 18. Relevant Legal Statutes on Gambling in Puerto Rico. The minimum legal gambling age in Puerto Rico does not depend upon the gambling activity: Land-Based Casinos: 18; Poker Rooms: 18; Bingo: 18; Lottery: 18; Pari-Mutuel Wagering: 18; The maximum denomination for a slot machine in Puerto Rico is $25. Get My Free Report Revealing. Gambling in Puerto Rico. Most types of gambling are legal in Puerto Rico, including casino games, lotteries, horse racing, bingo, and even cockfighting. The island has 19 casinos, one horse racing track, and a number of arenas for cockfighting. Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, so federal restrictions on gambling apply there. Facts About Casinos in Puerto Rico – Similar to most nations outside and within Central America, the minimum gambling age in Puerto Rico is 18 years. However, some casinos stick to 21 years of age to maintain a reasonably mature crowd. – As of 2016, Puerto Rico has a population of 3.41 million.
Many countries around the world are beginning to open their sports gambling markets. Now is the perfect time to look at gambling laws in Puerto Rico, and the reasons why this territory’s market is beginning to open up.
Evolution of Gambling Laws in Puerto Rico
As a US-controlled territory, Puerto Rico has implemented many of the same laws as the mainland United States. Gambling laws here, however, have been considerably more lenient than many states. Most traditional forms of gambling are perfectly legal here.
There is no dedicated Gambling Authority operating in Puerto Rico. The government here faces considerable difficulty in collecting large amounts of revenue from gaming establishments.
Sports betting is not legal inside Puerto Rico. This territory is under the same federal jurisdiction as US states, and until the summer of 2018 (when PASPA was finally thrown out) sports gambling was illegal throughout most of the country. Puerto Rico can now begin regulating this extremely popular form of gambling.
It’s an exciting time for sports fans on this Caribbean island. If these plans are officially approved, the entire gambling industry here will get a major upgrade. Let’s look at the specifics of this bill.
Details on Bill to Legalize Sports Betting in Puerto Rico
A bill drafted by Nestor Alonso Vega, a Chairman of the House Tourism Committee, was presented this week. This bill sets specific guidelines to legalize and regulate online and land-based sports gambling inside Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosello, is publicly supporting the bill, claiming that sports betting could bring in more than $60 million in taxes every year.
“This legislation, made possible by a Supreme Court decision last year, will make Puerto Rico an attractive place to visit, which will greatly benefit our tourism industry,” Rosello told the media.
The sports betting tax rate is unknown. Most analysts list it somewhere between 5-10% on all sports gambling operators.
This bill would do more than just legalize sports betting. Vega’s bill will also establish a Gambling Commission on the island. These groups license gambling companies and collect revenue earned through gaming. A Gambling Commission would significantly help this country regulate its gambling industry.
What Is The Legal Gambling Age In Puerto Rico
The Upside of Legalized Sports Gambling
Governor Rosello’s enthusiasm for this bill is a great sign. With no laws against legal sports betting, this territory has every right to begin regulating the industry. The big test comes at the Legislative Assembly.
There’s no doubt that Puerto Rico needs a revenue boost. The territory owes more than $80 million bond debt. That number may be even higher due to the destruction of Hurricane Maria in late 2017. Hope is that a legal sports betting market will generate massive tax earnings from locals and tourists.
The success of New Jersey may be influencing lawmakers here. The Garden State legalized sports betting back in mid-2018. Gambling revenue here has increased by over 50% since that time. Some feel that governor Rosello may be overestimating how much money may actually come into Puerto Rico from sports betting.
There’s a very good chance that sports betting in Puerto Rico will soon be legalized. If the Legislative Assembly agrees, and Rosello gives final approval, we may see sports betting here by 2020.
Do you think legal sports gambling will help Puerto Rico? Will the government here approved the bill? Let us know what you think in the comment section below!
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Puerto Rico is a semi-autonomous Caribbean territory of the United States, and for the most part operates as a separate country although it is still subject to the governance of U.S. federal law to a certain degree. It does not have political representation in Washington though and also lacks certain powers that U.S. states have. In the past there has been talk of making Puerto Rico a U.S. state nothing has come out of this yet.
While Puerto Rico is poorer than the poorest U.S. state, Mississippi, and almost half of Puerto Rico’s population lives below the poverty line, they have certainly benefited economically from being a U.S. possession. Puerto Rico has the highest per capita GDP in Latin America, at over $33,000.
It has a strong and very well developed economy for its size, with a population of about 3.5 million, and its leading economic driver is manufacturing, something you only see with more developed countries. (1)
While tourism plays a lesser role in Puerto Rico’s economy than some other Caribbean islands, they still do get a lot of tourists, with over 4 million visitors a year. A large number come from the United States, who don’t need a passport to enter, although they get visitors from a wide variety of different countries. (2)
Puerto Rico has quite a bit of legal and regulated gambling for an island of its size, with a total of 21 casinos, in addition to a casino cruise and a racetrack. The casinos here are located in 11 different cities, so they are pretty well dispersed within the island. (3)
As is typical in the Caribbean, the casinos here are mostly targeted towards tourists, although Puerto Rican residents are welcome at them as well. While Puerto Rico does have a lot of poor people, there are also a lot of people here who are fairly well off, and have the means to gamble at the major casinos, which tend to be out of reach of the population generally in many Latin American regions.
Legal Gambling Age In Puerto Rico
On the other hand, there are a lot of people who either can’t afford to gamble in the regular casinos or don’t wish to travel to them, and the way the law was constructed, the intention was to relegate gambling to these casinos only on the island, but the law isn’t said to cover “adult entertainment machines,” which is being interpreted by some as covering slot machines as well, and there are lots of slot parlors around the island that have taken advantage of this.
Whether these slot parlors are legal or not remains a matter of debate, but the larger casino operators are complaining that they are infringing upon their business, but on the other hand they do provide a popular land based gambling outlet for the residents here, even though they represent an expansion of the gambling scene that the government may not have intended. (4)
Legal Gambling Age In Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico has a wide variety of gambling options for the public, and aside from the casinos and the smaller slot parlors, there is also the lottery, bingo, horse racing, and various illegal gambling events such as cock fighting, dog fighting, and car racing. There used to be 125 cock fighting arenas here at one time when it is legal, and even though it’s not any more, it still goes on. (5)
Overall, gambling in Puerto Rico is wide open, and players have ample opportunity to gamble all they wish here, both online and offline.
Playing Poker in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico does have some land based poker available at several of their casinos, although only a limited amount. Hard core live players won’t have any problem finding a decent amount of action as long as they are willing to go to one of the casinos that offer it, and 5 of them do lay out poker on a full time basis, however there are only a total of 7 poker rooms on the island, so this is a pretty niche market to be sure. (6)
Other than that, players can play in private games if they can find them, or play on the internet. The internet has taken over the poker scene these days, and the overwhelming percentage of real money poker these days takes place online, and Puerto Rico is no exception.
Of course, with Puerto Rico being part of the United States, and with the way that poker rooms avoid the U.S. these days, and pretty much all of them do, it’s challenging to find a good online poker room to be able to play at. It’s not that they aren’t out there, but when you’ve culled the field to eliminate almost all of the good options, that’s going to make it more difficult for sure.
Poker is at least decently popular here, which isn’t the case in some Caribbean regions, and some of that may have to do with the influence of American culture here, and there’s certainly more of that since Puerto Rico is after all part of the U.S. Poker is certainly huge in the U.S., and it’s not anywhere near as big in Puerto Rico, but it does have its following.
It’s probably the case that the lack of options has probably stifled the online poker market quite a bit like it has on the mainland, and in spite of their still being some good options in the U.S., they just aren’t as well known, although they don’t have the traffic of Poker Stars and people are still lamenting about that, and quite a few grinders have moved to other countries so they can still play there.
Puerto Rico does have a high percentage of its population with internet access, about 75% of them, so that adds up to 2.7 million potential players. Puerto Rico does have regulated online gambling already, but it’s limited to horse racing only, although they do take a more progressive view of gambling than most states on the mainland do, with the exception of the ones that already have regulated online gambling anyway.
Top Online Poker Sites for Players from Puerto Rico
Perhaps at some point, they will bring in regulated poker here, but that’s probably a ways off, as poker really isn’t that big here yet. So for now, players are relegated to choosing from among the few sites that do accept them, although we do have a recommendation for you that will allow you to have the high quality experience that you seek and one comparable to the best online poker sites out there period.
Black Chip Poker is among our top 5 recommended online poker rooms in the world no matter where you live, and they are the only one that accepts players from Puerto Rico and almost all states in the United States as well.
There are a few concerns out there about U.S. facing poker rooms, and the biggest one is how well they deal with the challenges of moving money in and out of the poker rooms, and in particular, the speed, or lack of speed of withdrawals. The good news is that this has all been worked out much better lately within the industry as a whole, and this is the case at Black Chip as well, and the poker rooms that still struggle with this have pretty much fallen by the wayside now.
Black Chip also boasts a good amount of traffic, and that’s another concern that some of these poker rooms have, as you do want to play at a site which has enough traffic to make playing there worthwhile, and this is certainly the case here.
Overall, this is a good enough poker room to make our top 5 and we look at all the things that make a poker room good, and Black Chip Poker scores well. New players also get a nice bonus just for trying them out, and if you haven’t yet yourself, we recommend that you check them out.
References:
1. Puerto Rico
2. Tourism in Puerto Rico
3. Puerto Rican Casinos and Gambling in Puerto Rico
4. Online Gambling Sites in Puerto Rico
5. Gambling in Puerto Rico
6. Poker Rooms in Puerto Rico
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