Should Online Gambling be legalized in the US?

A recent poll that ran from July 30 to August 12 at the Las Vegas Advisor website showed a strong support for the regulation of on-line gambling by a margin of 68 percent to 32 percent.

Jul 30, 2008 - Aug 12, 2008 :: with 4799 total votes
Should online gambling be regulated and legalized in the U.S.? Pick whichever answer best fits how you feel.
(1275) Yes, although I don’t like to play online myself, I think everyone should have the right to.	(27%)
(1104) Yes, and I would play online for money if it was clearly legal.	(23%)
(848) Yes, I never stopped playing online but would be happier if it was definitely legal and regulated.	(18%)
(839) No, there have been too many scandals and I don’t trust that it can be regulated.	(17%)
(733) No, I think online casinos result in underage gambling and addiction.	(15%)
With all three Yes categories totalled, 68% were in favour of legalization, while 32% were opposed via two No categories. Considering the 17% who voted No due to "recent scandals," it could be argued that as high as 85% would be in favour if on-line gambling was properly regulated. The main reason for a Yes vote was the basic rights-and-liberties argument—"if they want to play, let ‘em play."

Source:
http://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/

According to Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor, the results of the poll reflected that :

"With all three Yes categories totaled, 68 percent were in favour of legalization, while 32 percent were opposed via two No categories. That’s a convincing majority, but less than the 75 percent - 92 percent (in favor) that we’ve seen from other sources".

Well, to be precise, visitors to a website like Anthony's can hardly be defined as representative sample from US society, but I was intrigued about those "75 percent - 92 percent in favour from other sources".

When a recent poll conducted by USA Today asked the question "Is it time to legalise on-line gambling?" 97 % of those who answered said they would favour the legalization and regulation of on-line gaming in the US.

Representative Jim McDermott has just recently presented a bill to congress to legalize and regulate on-line gambling, estimating that the resulting tax revenue from this industry would add up to over $40 billion within the next 10 years, money that could be used to raise revenues for training and foster home funding by amending the Social Security Act.

However, a bill in the United States to commission a comprehensive, independent study into on-line gambling will not come up for discussion before next month, at the earliest, after being put on the backburner along with various other pieces of legislation.
The Internet Gambling Study Act, sponsored by Nevada Representative Shelly Berkeley, was proposed last May and has the support of the American Gaming Association and many politicians.

Source:
http://www.onlinecasinoreports.com

More Info:
Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act
A Wall Street Journal Poll Shows That 85% of Americans Are Against The Congress Ban On Internet Gambling
Canada And US Public Perceptions Of Internet Gambling
Web Site Puts Focus on the Fix in Sports Bets
Online Gambling: Historical perspective

Project 119

During the XXVII Olympics in Sydney, the Chinese team won only one gold in traditionally Western dominated sports such as athletics, track and field, and water events such as swimming, canoeing and sailing.

The Chinese State General Sports Bureau introduced shortly thereafter “Project 199”, aimed at getting more medals in those sports, which combined account for 119 (updated to 122 in Beijing) of the 302 gold medals available . During the following 2004 Athens Olympics, the Chinese team won four gold medals on sports covered by “Project 119”.

The government has also pumped money into other not-so-popular sports such as archery and shooting, in an effort to overtake the USA (Russia doesn't seem to have much of a chance these days) as the country that will win the most Gold Medals in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

On a personal level, large cash bonuses, access to university and generous sponsorship deals await those athletes that make it to the podium.

Everyone is betting nowadays on who will win the win the most Gold Medals in Beijing.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, is predicting that the U.S. will likely continue its Olympic winning streak, both in golds (47 to 38 over second-place China) and total medals (110 to 93, with China second and Russia third on both counts).

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has concluded that China will win 88 medals overall, compared with 87 for the US, a close call that nonetheless would make Chinese very happy due to their belief on number 8 being a lucky number. It's not a coincidence that these Games have started on the 8th day of the 8th month of the 8th year.

In any case, there's no doubt that these Olympic Games are going to have an added spirit of competition not seen since the Cold War period, when the Soviet Union topped the medals board on eight occassions.

Darryl Seibel, spokesman for the US Olympic Committee, recently said that:

"We expect this to be one of the most competitive Olympics in recent history. That is down to a combination of China's investment in its Olympic programme, Russia's decision to do the same and the policy of some nations like Britain, which are targeting specific medals in sports that are important to them. China has to be considered the favourite. Every host nation receives a huge boost."

Ant that's the key to predict who will win the win the most Gold Medals in the 2008 Olympic Games, a variable that many forecasters seem to have failed to include in their formulas.
Remember Australia, Spain or Korea? Those countries received a lot more medals that they are used to when hosting the Games.

My prediction on who will win the win the most Gold Medals in Beijing? China, of course.
And all bookmakers seem to agree.

Bill HR 6663

US Republican Congressman Pete Sessions, has introduced Bill HR 6663, which intends to bring clarity to the UIGEA and the current state of US online gambling laws.
UIGEA (a.k.a. Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006) is the Title VIII of the The Security and Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006.
The Act was passed at midnight on the day Congress adjourned before the 2006 congressional elections. Though a bill with the gambling wording was previously debated and passed by the House of Representatives, the SAFE Port Act (H.R. 4954) as passed by the House on May 4 (by a vote of 421-2) and the U.S. Senate on September 14th (98-0), bore no traces of the Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act that was included in the SAFE Port Act signed into law by George W. Bush on October 13th, 2006.
The UIGEA was added in Conference Report 109-711, which was passed by the House by a vote of 409-2 and by the Senate by unanimous consent on September 30 2006. Due to H. Res. 1064, the reading of this conference report was waived.
The UIGEA title explicitly prohibits the transfer of funds from a financial institution to an Internet gambling site, with the notable exceptions of fantasy sports, online lotteries, and horse/harness racing.

Below you can read some of the reactions to this Act coming from the Blog community:

"I'm willing to bet (pun intended) that some crafty, innovative people out there in the online world will find ways to get around this ban. Sadly, however, a lot of people will probably have to go completely 'underground' to do it. And we shouldn't be surprised if a shady element enters the scene to try to get a cut of this business."
--The Technology Liberation Front

"Rather, I want to highlight that there are millions of ordinary Americans just like me who didn't ask for this ban, oppose it, and will be harmed by it. The industry invited regulation and taxation, and yet poker players are now facing an outright ban. Congress completely sold us out -- if you care about this issue, head over to the Poker Players Alliance site."
--A Copyfighter's Musings

"While all the big online gambling sites have said stuff about stopping bets from folks in the US, it's unlikely they'll really be able (or all that willing) to do so. People will still be online. At the same time, the WTO has already pointed out that the US's attitude towards online gambling is in violation of various agreements -- but it's not like the US is going to bother listening to an organization like the WTO."
--Techdirt

In April 2007, U.S. Congressman Barney Frank introduced a bill to overturn the gambling aspects of the Act, saying "The existing legislation is an inappropriate interference on the personal freedom of Americans and this interference should be undone." Additionally the bill sets up the framework for taxing and regulating online gambling by individuals within the United States.

The new Bill proposed by Sessions would also grant companies who willingly left the US market an amnesty, and opens the possibility of allowing them to re-enter the US market.

The current language of the UIGEA states that banks must stop allowing transactions to illegal Internet gambling sites. However, it does not define what illegal Internet gambling is and therefore makes it impossible for the banks to implement the UIGEA's stipulations.

Sessions' new Bill also attempts to clear up those ambiguous definitions by defining illegal online gambling as only related to sports betting.

The language also makes it clear that the ambiguity of the UIGEA has caused legitimate publicly traded UK companies to voluntarily exit the market, thus seriously damaging the companies' stature, while allowing non-complying companies who remained in the US market to thrive.

The stated purpose of Bill HR 6663 is outlined below:

SEC. 2. CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS AND PURPOSE.

(a) Findings- Congress finds the following:

(1) Prior to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (hereafter in this section referred to as the 'UIGEA'), Public Law 109-347, on October 13, 2006, Federal law was both vague and outdated regarding Internet gambling activities, as Federal criminal gambling statutes were passed decades before the commercial use of the Internet.

(2) To date, all Federal Internet gambling prosecutions have involved sports betting, creating a lack of authoritative court decisions on the applicability of other federal criminal statutes to Internet poker and casino-style gambling.

(3) Sports betting, which is illegal in 49 of the 50 States, is viewed as particularly harmful because its potential adverse impact on the integrity of professional and amateur sports, and is the one form of gambling where there is settled Federal case law clarifying it as illegal on the Internet.

(4) Many European Internet gambling companies offering services not including sports betting to persons in the United States were fully listed on the London Stock Exchange, and thereby subject to high standards of transparency and scrutiny, but upon receiving clarification of United States law regarding Internet gaming through the enactment of the UIGEA, these companies closed their sites to persons in the United States.

(5) Continued legal jeopardy for companies that made a good faith effort to comply voluntarily with clarified United States law following the passage of the UIGEA punishes behavior that the law intended to foster and inadvertently rewards continued noncompliance by other foreign entities.

(6) In light of the foregoing and in deference to long-standing constitutional requirements of fair notice and transparency in the criminal law, the Congress finds it necessary to clarify that criminal statutes applicable to gambling do not apply to any person who offered Internet gambling services that did not include sports betting prior to October 13, 2006, and who ceased offering Internet gambling services to persons in the United States upon passage of the UIGEA.

(7) To effect the purposes and intent of the UIGEA, it is the sense of the Congress that the Attorney General should focus any prosecutorial efforts on those persons who--

(A) offer Internet sports betting in the United States; or

(B) process payments for illegal Internet sports betting in the United States.

Victoria losing out with Intralot

Intralot, the Greek gambling multinational began operating in Victoria (Australia) on July 1 2008, putting an end to Tattersall's 54-year monopoly.
Intralot counts already with more than 700 points of salein Victoria and will soon become the largest network in the state.
In a recent statement the company disclosed that

"Instant games ... are performing very well and the rest of the games are performing according to our expectations"

But for the Lottery Agents Association these are very bad news. According to them about 500 Victorian operators are losing 15 per cent or more of their lottery income since then and estimates the government's revenue losses at $900,000 a week.

Last year, Intralot won a 10 year licence to operate lottery and instant games for Victoria, expanding its presence in the country. It also operates in Western Australia and Tasmania.

Intralot is a Greek company engaged in the design, development, production, trading and operation of custom-made gaming information systems, equipment and services.
The Company's gaming applications include numerical, video and sport lotteries, as well as fixed odds betting, pari-mutuel wagering and instant lottery games.

Its product range includes lottery operating systems:

• LOTOS, which is a software application platform
• information display systems that offer real time information on the progress and outcome of gaming events
• video lottery systems that control and monitor services for managing networks of video lottery terminals
• the CORONIS line of terminals that can support lottery and video gaming sessions, as well as payment methods and mobile terminals for agents.

The Company is also engaged in technical support and training, games and sales network design, as well as in market analysis and development. It is present in Europe, Americas, Africa, Oceania and Australia.

Games Library includes more than 400 types of games: Numerical Lotteries, TV Lottery Games, Sports Lotteries, Fixed Odds Betting, Instant Lotteries, Pari-mutuel, Video Lottery and Monitor Games.

Established in 1992 in Athens, Greece, it has Regional Offices in USA, Latin America, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand Office, Wellington, New Zealand and Johannesburg.
INTRALOT is listed on the Athens Stock Exchange since 1999. Its market capitalization is about € 1.8 billion and in 2007 it obtained revenues for €835.5 million
EBITDA: €262.9 million
EBT: €217.8 million

As a vendor and/or lottery operator, INTRALOT has been awarded contracts for a wide range of products (systems, terminals, alternative distribution channels, VLT’s, etc.) and gaming applications (lotteries, instant lotteries, fixed odds betting, etc.) in the USA (Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, South Carolina, Ohio), Chile, Peru, Colombia, Greece, Germany, Cyprus, Poland, Romania, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Serbia & Montenegro, FYROM, Moldova, Malta, the Philippines, Nigeria, New Zealand, Australia (Western Australia, Victoria, Tasmania), Egypt, Israel, Taiwan, Malaysia, S.Africa, Italy, Argentina, South Korea, Slovakia, The Netherlands and Vietnam.

Definition of Gambling

gambling (v)

1. Present participle of gamble.

gamble (plural gambles)

1. A risk undertaken with a potential gain. A significant risk is implied
2. A risky venture

gambling (n) (plural gamblings)

1. An activity characterised by a balance between winning and losing that is governed by a mixture of skill and chance.

According to Wikipedia:

Gambling has a specific economic definition, referring to wagering money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. Typically, the outcome of the wager is evident within a short period of time.

Wikipedia article on:

Gambling

See Also:

• Online gambling
• Mobile gambling
• Casino
• Gambler's ruin
• Gambler's fallacy
• Gaming mathematics