Who Has the Most Control?
The trend of regulating the online casino gambling industry has taken a backseat
to more pressing issues for a lot of countries over the past couple of years.
The US market has milked the recession and mortgage lending crises for years now
as a reason that Congress cannot consider the new bills that aim at legalizing,
licensing, and taxing the online casinos. The scapegoat is no longer valid,
however, and the US market has been forced to assess the country’s current
internet gambling policy with an eye toward making this aspect of the US
function better. The US though, by waiting so long to address the situation has
really lost control over the offshore internet gambling market. Countries like
the UK and the nations of the European Union have clearly demonstrated that
regulated gambling industry lends far more control.
The UK was really the first to pass very liberal online casino gambling
regulations that expanded the breadth of the gambling market and also taxed the
industry to better support the state budget. The tight legislation and licensing
process has ensured that there is very little room in the market for
unscrupulous and unlicensed online casinos because there are so many quality
sites from which to choose. The EU has followed the UK example to some extent
but has less control right now because the individual EU member states have
varying policies and licensing procedures where the internet gambling sites are
concerned.
In this hierarchy of what has worked for the international online casino
gambling industry and what has not worked well, the US sits at the bottom of the
pile. The UIGEA currently in place is a train wreck piece of legislation and is
not serving the US market well. The EU has some great intentions and is in the
enforcement phase of a more cohesive set of gambling requirements between the
sites, but on the whole the UK stands out as a country that has found a decent
balance in the online gambling regulation process. |