In an opinion piece vindicated by last Thursday’s adoption of online poker rules for Nevada and the DoJ ruling that the Wire Act only applies to sports betting, I argue in the Las Vegas Business Press that politics won’t trump pragmatism when it comes to online gambling.
The opposition of Adelson, who has solid political connections, particularly within the Republican party, would seem to render that possibility moot.Or does it?
Politics is only part of the online gambling equation, and, despite current appearances, not necessarily the most important part. A comparison with Prohibition, which banned alcohol in the 1920s, is instructive.
via Las Vegas Business Press :: David G. Schwartz : Prohibition may offer lessons for Net gaming.
I wrote this well before last Thursday…a week before, to be precise. That’s when the echo chamber was reverberating with news that Adelson was morally opposed to online poker. The “consensus” was that online poker was dead in the water.
But, as we saw, the politicians haven’t had the last word on this–at least, Congress hasn’t.
I’ve been saying for years now that the best way to handle online gaming is to let states regulate it. As with horse racing, states can decide on their own if they want to legalize online poker, then figure out how to split the revenues among themselves. And it looks like that’s where we’re headed.