Internet Gambling

 

In the book, I said this about gambling and gaming.

This is becoming one of the largest and most important sections of the Internet. Just look at how many football teams are sponsored by on-line gambling companies!

Some of the sites are also some of the most pointless.

For instance, what sane person would spend hours playing fruit machines on the Internet. We all know that there can only be one winner.

But on the other hand, I do bet on horses using a betting exchange on the Internet. Here you can play punter or bookmaker as you want and you test your judgement against others.

We will see tremendous growth in Internet gambling and gaming over the next few years.

Some like the Americans will try and stop it, mainly to protect their own gambling industry in places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City. They will fail!

Today saw an interesting news story with the arrest of David Carruthers, the CEO of BetOnSports, in Dallas.

This is only a minor skirmish in a war that the Americans will lose.

Large gambling markets will develop outside of the US, just as they are starting to develop in the UK, with the help of a friendly government. Remember that at present only a few percent of gambling is on-line. These companies will become very powerful and and good ones will be respected, offering bets on anything you like anywhere in the world. They will also develop interesting proxy methods so that anybody can gamble from anywhere in the world, just like the Chinese people have, so they can view pornographic web sites like the BBC, which their own government bans.

Suppose the Americans decided to prosecute any employee of an on-line gambling company, who set foot in the US. Or they tried to use the one-way fast-track process to extradite the NatWest 3. It would not be long before, America would be getting more hatred than it currently does now with Iraq, global warming, GM foods, the death penalty and lots of other issues, where it is on the different side of the fence to the rest of the world.

That would not change the minds of the American government.

However, the best casino brands names from Las Vegas, who would see their market shrinking fast, would make sure that mind was changed.

After all how long would some of the on-line gambling companies survive, if they had to compete directly with proven Las Vegas operators?