Via the indefatigable Niall O’Connor, this long Telegraph round-up:
Jason Chess, a partner at Wiggin, the London law firm, and a gaming law specialist, says: “Nobody should be blasé about what the Americans are doing. They’re acting very aggressively, and if you’re an executive of an internet gaming company operating just about anywhere from Alderney to the Isle of Man, the message is, don’t go anywhere near the US.”
Chess describes the DoJ’s actions as “nothing more than economic and imperialist bullying” and says the two-faced approach of the American authorities towards gambling shows there is a need to stand up to the DoJ. “There are US politicians preaching that gambling is a destroyer of families while a quarter of the [US] population spends its vacations putting coins in slot machines in Vegas casinos,” he says. “For me this is more about driving foreign traders out of action so Nevada and Vegas don’t lose out on business in the future. The moves being made now give the US time to sort out the legalisation of online gaming and give the Vegas brands time to establish their own brands online.”
Warwick Bartlett of Global Betting & Gaming Consultants agrees. “The Americans want to bring these gaming company executives to what they refer to as ‘justice’, which means slamming them in jail, pocketing their proceeds from the business and claiming the market as their own. Our view is that the US will legalise online gaming within five years. These subpoenas and the arrests represent sheer hypocrisy.”
The DoJ refuses to comment on the ongoing activity and won’t even state the name of the specific crime it is investigating. But the American Gaming Association confirms that the legal status of online gaming in the US could change in the future. Helen Thomsen of the association says: “The AGA supports a study of online gambling in the US being congressionally funded. Such a study would look into how online gambling could be properly regulated and controlled. We are pursuing the matter with the new Senate and hopefully a study could begin in the next few months. We can’t be sure of how the recent change of power in the Senate will affect the future status of online gambling but it’s interesting that the majority leader is Harry Reid, who is from Nevada, one of the larger gambling centres.”
Sounds *extremely* accurate. Except five years is a bit conservative. Major U.S. based casinos will *legally* be making billions off online gambling within 2-3 years.
That’s what I thought, too —although I’m a less accurate observer than you are.