CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a very interesting program covering the online gambling industry. To generate interest in the topic, CBS released some interesting facts on online gambling prior to airing the show, which pointed out that so many Americans play at Internet gambling sites that if those websites were to be regulated and taxed by American authorities, tax revenues would be in the billions. The publicity generating releases also pointed out that opponents of online gambling think it should remain illegal because the online gambling sites can never be effectively policed. Opponents also argue that the online gambling sites can and do corrupt children and create more problem gamblers. Lesley Stahl, of “60 Minutes”, who examined the whole online gambling issue, also interviewed Sportingbet’s Nigel Payne. Payne claims that the U.S. Treasury is losing an opportunity to generate more tax revenues. “We calculated that, were America to have regulated the industry in 2004, the American states would have earned $1.2 billion in tax,” Payne said Payne further added that Sportingbet would happily pay an American tax if it meant that the U.S. would begin regulating the industry, since regulations would help eliminate some of the less reputable sites. Payne estimates that 12.5 million Americans gamble on the Internet. Nearly 80 percent of the bets placed over the Internet originate in the U.S. and make up most of the ten billion dollars in profit the online gambling industry will make this year. The number of Americans gambling over the Internet is growing too, in spite of the fact that online gambling is illegal in the U.S. There is not much being done about it though, as U.S. law enforcement does not prosecute individual gamblers and overseas operators are out of U.S. legal jurisdiction. Another point made by the show was that the U.S.’s own domestic gambling industry, which once opposed online gambling, has begun to embrace it after seeing so many competitors in the gambling world make billions of dollars. CEO of MGM/Mirage, Terry Lanni, is one such proponent of online gambling: There’s gaming in every state but two in the United States,” Lanni says. “If it’s legal [in 48 states] and it’s regulated and taxed and we’re comfortable with it, why don’t we allow it also in the area of the Internet? It makes no sense.” Arizona Senator Jon Kyl , who strongly opposes the legalization of online gambling, was also interviewed on the program. Kyl is pushing for updated, stricter, and enforceable laws prohibited online gambling. Posted on: November 26, 2005
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