Washington DC has become the first state in the US to allow online gambling.

The news comes about after the Washington Mayor (Vincent C. Gray) officially signed the states budget budget back in January which included provisions generated by online gambling.

This was then passed to Congress, but the time period that they had to object to the proposal has now expired.

Buddy Roogow, the executive director of the Washington Lottery has already begun to outline plans for online gambling which will be operated through the D.C. Lottery who have agreed a 50-50 revenue split with Intralot USA.

A Free-Play gambling website is due to go live at the beginning of July with real money games scheduled to be offered to Washington residents by September 1st. These games will be available from up to 30 different hotspots such as the Covention Centre and a host of bars, clubs and hotels dotted around the state.

Players wanting to participate in online gambling would need to bring their own laptop to one of those hotspots and connect wirelessly to a number of different games which will include casino, poker and a handful of fantasy sports products.

Before people are allowed to gambling in their own homes, technology needs to be developed to ensure that the casino games are only available within the geographic limits of Washington DC. However, something suitable is expected to be in place by the end of the year by which time Washington residents will be able to wager online just like their European counterparts.

In an interview he gave to the Washington Post, Mayor Gray accepted that online gambling was something that DC residents had been involved with for many years, with all profits leaving the country.

This latest decision is simply the states decision to clan their fair share of what is a very profitable industry. Indeed, he estimated that the state would receive approximately $13.1m between 2012 and 2014.

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