Industry leaders have predicted the latest attempt by US Senator John Kyl to introduce legislation to outlaw the funding of online gambling accounts is doomed to failure.
Senator John Kyl will make another attempt to introduce a bill that would ban “instruments of banking” from being used to fund egaming accounts later this year.
The bill has failed to attract widespread support on previous attempts, with the last bill floundering in the face of special interest objections from the Las Vegas and horseracing lobbies.
The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2005 would introduce a ban on credit cards, money transfers and other payment systems.
But several industry insiders have predicted the lack of concessions to existing remote gambling operations such as the US horseracing industry would be likely to make the bill a piece of lame duck legislation.
“Senator Kyl’s bill really doesn’t stand much of a hope,” Nigel Payne, chief executive of Sportingbet, said.
“He has had to go for no carve outs in his Bill, which was essential to get the AGA to neutral, but in so doing he has alienated the native American gaming group, the state lotteries and the horseracing industry.”
Some analysts have said the all-or-nothing approach could play well with the US government following the recent WTO decision on the US dispute with Antigua.
The WTO ruled the US could claim a public interest defence if it prohibited all forms of remote gaming, but Mark Mendel, Antigua’s lead counsel, said this was an untenable strategy.
“The American ‘remote’ industry is too entrenched and powerful to either be legislated away or be happy with Antiguans being legislated into legitimate competitors,” Mendel said.
“As I had initially believed when we brought this case, there is no good or easy solution for the US on this, and it is going to be fascinating to see how it all plays out.”
But he agreed with Payne that the vested gaming interests in the US would provide too strong an opposition for the bill to proceed.
“The WTO decision cuts both against and for him, but the competing interests makes his proposal untenable either way,” Mendel said.
source : egr magazine
