Legislation to allow Internet gambling is scheduled to be introduced today by US Representative Barney Frank.
Similar legislation failed in the last Congress. Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, has support for the bill from such companies as Youbet.com Inc., and Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., in addition to the Poker Players Alliance, formed to overturn a 2006 ban on Internet poker.
Supporters “have been mobilizing,” Frank said last week. “This is a grass-roots thing.”
The legislation would allow licensed gambling operators to accept online wagers from people in the United States. The bill would revise the 2006 law, which made it a crime for banks to process financial transactions used to place illegal bets online.
Harrah’s vice president Jan Jones said regulating and taxing online gambling might swell government coffers by $2 billion to $6 billion annually. “At a time where there is no money, that can be going to healthcare or S-CHIP,” the children’s insurance program, Jones said.
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The US government thinks of regulating gambling to earn a lot of money for the state budget. Likewise, governments think in Europe, where there is a long list of state monopolies that harm consumers. Even though certain moves, mostly cosmetic, take place, for instance in France, to open the market up, the reality is different.
Therefore, the consumers initiative Right2bet is implementing a campaign to gather signatures to a petition and present them to the European authorities and demand that a European regulated, commercially friendly market is implemented in the gambling sector. Sign the petition at http://www.right2bet.net.