AGA Lends Support
The campaign to legalize online casino in the United States has just gotten
quite a bit of a boost this week as the American Gaming Association announced
its tentative support for a legalized and open US gambling industry. Up until
this point, the AGA, which specifically backs the interests of the land gambling
industry in the US, has sat on the fence in this internet gambling debate
because some land gambling companies were resistant to the amount of competition
that legalized online casinos would bring for the land venues. All of the major
commercial casinos in the US are represented by the AGA in Washington through
lobbying and educational efforts that the Association implements on behalf of
all of the companies.
Over the past several years the proponents of a fair and open online casino
market have been strongly asking the AGA for its support in moving Congress to
repeal the controversial ban on offshore gaming and instead regulate and license
sites in the market. Most of the major casinos active in the AGA either sat on
the fence about the issue or straight out deny support for online gambling. More
recently though, the AGA has complied and conducted massive research about the
internet gambling industry and concluded that it would be in the best interests
of the land gambling industry to support and back efforts to legitimize the US
internet gambling industry.
The AGA has found that the online casino gambling sites can maintain safe
standards in their game play and that regulations and licensing would mean a far
safer environment for the gamblers themselves. The currently unregulated market
is still rampant and yet there are no firm controls or protections in place. The
AGA’s research concludes that while some of the federal government’s initial
concerns regarding the internet gambling industry were valid, those have been
resolved and it is time to repeal the UIGEA and make some new federal
regulations for the industry. |