If you ever wanted to place a bet before last year, you either had to drive to a local casino or try your luck at an online gaming site. This online phenomena seems to be revolutionizing the way some individuals gamble. I myself would rather go to a casino. I enjoy being around people, getting a few free drinks and having a good time with friends. However, I’m sure many people don’t actually enjoy being in a casino and would rather place wagers on all sorts of games and events from the comfort of their own home. This being said when you are at the casino the games are very transparent. You can hold your chips and can easily see if you are winning or losing. I’m sure if you ask other individuals that visit casinos on whether or not they would gamble online, their answer would likely be “no”. When gambling at casinos, games are for the most part played fair because the consequences of cheating by casino operators are disastrous. Casinos that employ rigged games will lose their gambling licenses permanently. In this new industry there a more than a number of concerns over how laws ought to properly deal with internet gambling.
Online Gaming: Positive Impact
Online gaming sites offer all types of games, from traditional card games to lotteries to sports wagering. They also offer other proposition bets, which include betting on pop culture, like who will win “The Bachelor”. Or my new favorite, according to Darren Rovell of ESPN, 167 people correctly bet that Suarez would bite an opponent during the World Cup. Who would of thought? Estimates show unregulated online gaming in “black” markets is thriving – more than one million Americans spend nearly $3 billion annually in overseas gaming sites. An estimated 22,000 American jobs and more than $26 billion in tax revenue can be generated through regulated online gaming. Globally, 85 nations have chosen to legalize and regulate online gambling. France, Great Britain, Italy, some Canadian provinces and others have created successful regulatory structures that work to protect their citizens. Which has led Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware to begin permitting intrastate online gaming.
Online Gaming: Draw Backs
Many state lawmakers think that legalized online gambling can generate much needed tax revenue for their state. However, they might want to take a step back and look at Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey. Last year these three states became the first in the country to legalize Internet gaming.
But as New Jersey Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff told state lawmakers earlier this year: “Clearly, the results so far have not met our expectations.” New Jersey officials initially predicted legal online gambling would boost state tax revenues by $180 million in fiscal year 2014. By the time Republican Gov. Chris Christie signed the budget last June, the figure had been revised downward to $160 million. By the end of May, one month shy of the fiscal year’s end, the state had taken in just $9.3 million in revenue from online gambling, according to the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services. And with collections in April and May falling below those in March, online gambling isn’t even trending upward. State officials have blamed the slow start on technology glitches and payment processing issues.
According to Chris Grove, editor of the Online Poker Report. “New Jersey’s revenue estimates were unrealistic from the start, because they relied on the most optimistic projections and counted on 12 months’ worth of revenue even though online gambling did not go live until late November, nearly halfway into the fiscal year”. Grove also said the state’s initial revenue estimates for online gambling were “driven far more by political need and budgetary magic math than by sober, rational analysis of the market.”
Gambling is any activity that involves payment, risk, and prize. It may come in a thousand different packages, it may claim to be for a worthy cause, but it remains an activity designed to take the money of many and place it in the hands of a few.
Below is legislation regarding online gaming.
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