As I said in Cutting the Wire, online gambling will become unambiguously legal in the United States once we reach a certain tipping point: the need for state revenues will outweigh any lingering opposition to “expanded” gambling.
The Grand Forks Herald reports on a North Dakota legislator who sees the same thing:
A lawmaker who advocated making North Dakota the first state to license Internet poker companies has been in demand as a speaker on the issue, making trips to Las Vegas, Montreal and the Caribbean island of Antigua this year.
Rep. Jim Kasper, R-Fargo, and four other North Dakota legislators went to Antigua for four days earlier this month on what they described as an unofficial trade mission. Their trip was paid for by the Antiguan government, they said.
Antigua licenses Internet poker companies, and Antiguan government statements on the trip focused on North Dakota’s potential role in Internet gambling, including the possible use of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota to handle wagers.
In September, Kasper was a featured speaker at the Casino Affiliate Convention in Las Vegas, which focused on Internet marketing for the gambling industry.
In June, he attended the annual Global Interactive Gaming Summit & Expo in Montreal, a conference organized by the River City Group of St. Charles, Mo. River City’s chief executive officer, Sue Schneider, helped lobby for Kasper’s Internet poker measure during the 2005 Legislature.
Kasper believes state licensing of poker Web sites is a potentially lucrative source of money for the state treasury, and industry officials who favored his bill said they were eager for U.S. regulation.
“I am not putting away the idea of getting into Internet gaming licenses in North Dakota,” Kasper said. “The revenue we missed is too great to pass up.”
Nevada and the U.S. Virgin Islands have approved bills allowing for state licensing and regulation of Internet poker sites, but have been wary of following through because of U.S. Justice Department statements that Internet gambling is illegal in the United States.
Poker might be the foot in the door that online gambling needs. After all, it is chiefly player-to-player betting, with little exposure for the house (that’s the problem with government-sponsored sports betting).
To those who laugh at the idea of North Dakota blazing a trail into a new age of legal online poker, remember that once isolated Nevada was considered hopelessly backward for sanctioning–gasp–legal public casino gambling.