Pennsylvania lawmakers have received a 126-page staff study calling for major changes to sports betting and other interactive gambling. Produced by the Joint State Government Commission, the legislature’s non-partisan research arm, under House Resolution 60 of 2025, the report says the state should tighten rules on how wagers are funded, placed and marketed.
The commission wants sportsbooks barred from accepting credit-card deposits, and it wants bettors to set limits on losses, session length and deposit frequency before they can play. It also backs banning autoplay, curbing VIP programmes that reward deposits, losses or betting volume, and tightening advertising, including limits on campus marketing, repeated ad saturation and direct promotions shown when users are logged out.
According to the study, licensed operators should also submit anonymized player data for independent analysis. Researchers would look at deposits, bet size, frequency, speed, session length and use of parlays or in-play bets, with the aim of sharpening later restrictions.
The sharpest language is directed at live wagering. The report says in-game bets, or microbets, may be the most problematic wagers and could be prohibited, while WSN reported that the commission recommended a full ban on live betting. Pennsylvania’s current code still defines in-game wagers as bets made after an athletic event starts and allows the board to permit them.
The report says the recommendations respond to rising signs of harm. It cites a 2025 Pennsylvania assessment estimating that 17% to 30% of adults gambled online, with sports betting the most common online format. It puts the potential problem-gambling rate tied to sports betting at 2.5% to 6.4%, and the share at risk at 27.9% to 29.9%.
The same study says online gambling was mentioned in more than half of calls to 1-800-GAMBLER, while self-exclusions rose nearly 65% over the previous year. It says Pennsylvania gambling generated nearly $6.4bn in the 2024-25 fiscal year, including nearly $2.48bn from iGaming and about $487m from sports wagering, and argues that regulation has to protect players without ignoring the market’s economic role.
Separately, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has proposed its own responsible-gambling amendments for online casinos, including longer account suspensions, more ways to set betting and spending limits, opt-outs from direct marketing, monthly reports on self-limitation and self-exclusion activity, and tougher advertising standards.
