Hawaii’s legislators are going after “fish tables,” but they might hook sweepstakes casinos with their new bill.
Senate Bill 3281, filed Thursday, helps refine Hawaii’s gambling enforcement efforts in regard to “illegal electronic gambling devices” known as “fish games,” “fish tables,” or “fishing games.” The bill says that these devices “operate outside any lawful gambling framework and generate significant concerns about public safety, consumer protection, and organized crime.”
However, the text also references “sweepstakes gambling machines and similar devices.”
Sponsored by Sen. Donovan Cruz, Sen. Stanley Chang, Sen. Troy Hashimoto, and Sen. Chris Lee, the bill states a need for Hawaii to “ safeguard communities against illegal electronic gambling devices, impose duties on operators and complicit property owners, and to protect the constitutional property rights of noncomplicit owners of premises on which illegal electronic gambling devices have allegedly been used.”
It expands the definition of “illegal electronic gambling device” to mean “any machine,” including sweepstakes gaming machines or similar electronic gambling devices that “award or allows the exchange of points, credits, tokens, prizes, merchandise, gift cards, cash equivalents, or anything of value based in whore or in part upon chance of a combination of chance and skill.”
Could that language put Sweeps Coin gameplay under the umbrella of illegality?
Should sweepstakes casinos worry?
This legislation targets physical games. Throughout the text, it speaks of physical devices: “No owner, lessor, sublessor, or property manager of any premises shall knowingly permit the operation of an illegal electronic gambling device on the premises,” reads section §712-C, likely talking about those casino machines you find in truck stops, bars and other adult lobbies.
But the language could give Hawaii’s Attorney General the ammunition it needs to go after dual-currency gaming via a loose interpretation of “illegal electronic gambling device” that “award or allows the exchange of points, credits, tokens, prizes.” Hawaii has long been seen as an anti-gambling state, and many online sweepstakes casinos are already not active in the state.
However, broad statements might be challenged in court.
Hawaii targeting prediction markets in no uncertain terms
Of note, Hawaii lawmakers also introduced House Bill 2198, one that would make prediction markets illegal in the state — and this bill won’t need any loose interpretation.
“The legislature also finds that not only do some or all of these types of contracts violate moral and ethical standards, but they also prey upon a gap in Hawaii’s gambling laws that permit contracts for the purchase and sale at a future date of securities or commodities,” reads the text.
HB2198 seeks to “update Hawaii’s gambling laws to expressly prohibit prediction event contracts relating to sports, contests, people, politics, catastrophe, and death.” Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket would become illegal and inaccessible in Hawaii, even though the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulates them at the federal level.
These platforms have faced similar challenges in the past, with Kalshi securing a license to operate in Massachusetts.
