As it stands today, individual states are free to prohibit or practice gambling within their borders while significant regulations and limits are placed on interstate which activity. In recent years, online gambling has seen harsher regulations. With the Unlawful Web Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIEGA), it had been not explicitly banned but instead it was online financial transactions that were outlawed. This meant that online financial transactions from gambling service providers were now illegal which resulted in various offshore gambling operators excluding US clients from their services.
Existing in this lawful grey area, it is no longer a problem of if online gambling will go into the united states market but when as well as perhaps how. As recently as this month, three claims own legalized online gambling and plan to begin offering bets by the finish of the year. Naturally, a gaming company in Las Vegas known as Ultimate Gaming was the first ever to offer online poker but also for now restricting it to only players in Nevada. New Jersey and Delaware have also legalized online gambling and so far ten other states are thinking about legalizing it in some form or another.
Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Games Association has explained that “Unless there exists a federal bill passed, we are going to have the greatest expansion of legalized gambling in the usa. I don’t think that’s what anyone intended, nonetheless it is what we’re experiencing.” This poses plenty of questions and of course concerns for many existing commercial casinos and also American policy makers. Will lawful online gambling mean fewer persons in offline casinos? Will this develop a new source of revenue at the state and national level? What about taxes and regulations? A rise in gamblers?
Lots of people including Arnie Wexler, former chairman of New Jersey’s Council On Compulsive Gambling offers voiced concern that with all the good this could do to create income and revenue for personal states there could be problems with an increase in compulsive gambling. Meja138 There’s particular concern regarding social media in the US as some locations like Zynga have previously begun taking real-money bets.
Taking in mind all the questions and concerns, many resort casinos are already making strategies to expand into online gambling to check their real casinos. Geoffrey Stewart, general manager of Caesars Online Poker has said “Like any business, you’re always looking for what is another distribution channel.”