Washington DC’s proposed online casino legislation sets no limit on how many companies can obtain a license. The real barrier to legal play in the District is not a scarcity of permits — it is an unresolved question of federal authority that no council vote can settle on its own.

Councilmember Wendell Felder introduced Bill 26-0656, the Internet Gaming and Consumer Protection Act of 2026, to the DC Council on April 9, according to TechStartups.com. The bill would authorize blackjack, poker, roulette, and slot-style products for adults 21 and older physically located on non-federal land in the District — a geographic qualifier that turns out to matter considerably.

What the Bill Actually Proposes

The legislation is structured as open entry filtered by cost rather than by quota. Each licensed operator receives two mobile skins, and the Office of Lottery and Gaming retains authority to approve additional skins upon a showing of good cause. No fixed ceiling on operators exists.

What filters the field instead is a $2 million application fee paired with a 25 percent tax on gaming revenue. That combination prices out operators without an established balance sheet without rationing permits by number. The Office of Lottery and Gaming, which already oversees DC sportsbooks, would regulate the new market under the same roof.

Incumbents in that sportsbook space have moved quickly to signal readiness. Representatives of DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM each testified at a May hearing that their companies could be live within six months of passage. That confidence rests on compliance infrastructure already in place, not on privileged access to licenses.

Central to that infrastructure is geolocation. Federal parcels are scattered through DC neighborhoods, not confined to obvious landmarks, and the bill restricts play to non-federal land. Operators who have already built geolocation systems precise enough to satisfy that requirement for sports betting have effectively solved the same problem for online casino products. That technical capability is a real differentiator. It is not something a new entrant can replicate quickly.

A Settled Market in the Baltic Offers a Contrast

Jaan Girdeinis, an iGaming industry analyst with more than a decade of experience in the sector, draws a straight line from the bill’s open-entry design to the compliance question the federal legal risk raises. The absence of a license cap, he notes, means DC players’ eventual choices will be shaped less by how many operators apply and more by how many clear both the local fee bar and whatever federal standard ultimately applies — a bar the Johnson Act analysis presented at the May hearing makes considerably higher than it first appeared.

“In markets where the regulatory question is settled, the compliance bar defines the field more visibly than the permit count does. Players end up relying on independent resources to distinguish vetted operators from unvetted ones — not because the list is long, but because the stakes of choosing wrong are real.”

Girdeinis points to Lithuania as a working example. There, the licensing regime is resolved and the field of compliant operators is defined. Players consult CasinoGuru Lithuania to identify which operators have met that bar and which have not. That kind of reference point, he observes, becomes the practical infrastructure of a regulated market once the legal architecture is finished. DC players are not there yet.

The Johnson Act and DC’s Unique Congressional Exposure

The federal complication the bill faces is not the ordinary regulatory risk a US state would encounter. DC occupies a constitutionally distinct position, and that distinction extends to the legislative process any major policy change must survive.

Testimony at the May hearing cited a commissioned legal analysis concluding that iGaming would likely violate the federal Johnson Act. The systems that deliver online casino games, the analysis argued, probably constitute prohibited gambling devices under federal law. If that reading holds, congressional action would be required before iGaming could legally proceed in the District — council passage alone would not be sufficient.

No vote was taken at the May hearing. The path forward still requires the full thirteen-member Council to pass the bill, the Mayor to sign it, and Congress to complete its review. Lawmakers have not signaled any urgency, and legislative calendar recesses remain ahead. Each of those steps is a gate, not a formality. The Johnson Act question is the one that could require an entirely separate federal intervention before any of the others become consequential.

Why the Industry Is Watching Anyway

None of that uncertainty has dampened the industry’s engagement with the bill. Councilmember Matthew Frumin cited an estimate that District residents wagered close to $700 million on unlicensed platforms in 2024 — demand the bill is designed to redirect toward regulated, taxable operators. That figure represents money currently flowing without producing any DC revenue.

A gaming-funded super PAC has spent roughly $417,000 on mailers supporting several council members’ reelection campaigns. The sum is larger than DC’s modest residential base of roughly 700,000 people would justify on its own, and industry observers read it as a signal about the bill’s broader directional importance rather than its immediate market size.

That positional significance is concrete. Maine legalized iGaming in January. Virginia and Maryland both deferred action to 2027. A functioning DC framework would become the most proximate reference case either neighboring jurisdiction could cite when its own debate resumes. The city does not move the needle the way Pennsylvania or New Jersey does, but a working model matters.

Three variables will determine whether a functioning model actually emerges. First, the Johnson Act question — whether Congress acts, and how, will set the outer boundary of what DC can authorize at all. Second, whether provisions targeting sweepstakes casinos survive the bill’s progression; their removal or survival will reshape who competes in the unlicensed space in the interim. Third, whether the fee structure holds: a $2 million application fee and a 25 percent revenue tax are set at levels that could shift before a final vote, and any movement there changes the competitive math for smaller operators considering entry.

DC’s earlier experience with online sports betting shadows all of it. That rollout produced a single-operator arrangement widely criticized for its performance, to the point the Council explored unwinding parts of it. The current bill’s open-entry architecture is a direct response to that outcome. The lesson from the sports betting chapter has already been incorporated. The federal question is the one the District has not faced before in quite this form, and it is the one no local legislative fix can resolve on its own.