Online Poker
Legislators in Nevada have introduced a bill to regulate the Internet poker industry. New Jersey lawmakers recently passed a bill that would have made Internet gambling legal in the state. California and Iowa lawmakers are also considering legislation that would legalize online poker in their jurisdictions.
Efforts to make it legal to play online poker are continuing at the state level after Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s bill to set federal regulations for online gambling never moved forward during December’s lame duck session of Congress.
Even so, Nevada casinos are opposed to the move and New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie vetoed his state legislature’s bill last week.
There’s a lot of money in online gaming and potentially this could be a huge source of needed income for cash-strapped states like Nevada and New Jersey, where income at casinos is on the decline.
Many of the objections raised to the bills at state level think online gaming in the United States should be regulated at the federal level instead. In an interview with the Associated Press, Alan Feldman, spokesman for MGM Resorts International, said, “I think everyone’s objective should be to get the proper bill passed, and to do so federally.”
Responding to the proposed Nevada bill, Jan Jones, senior vice president for communications and public relations at Caesars Entertainment Corp., said, “This is not a bill that we support. Our focus is not intrastate, our focus is interstate. It’s federal, it’s putting together an American, an appropriate regulation and licensing regime and taking the jobs and revenues going to foreign companies and bringing it back to America.”
When he vetoed his state legislature’s bill at the beginning of this month, New Jersey Governor Christie suggested that legislators “should place the question on the ballot for the voters to decide.”
The New Jersey bill would have allowed casinos in Atlantic City to operate online gambling websites in partnership with software providers. Unlike the vetoed New Jersey bill, the new proposal now on the table in Nevada would allow popular existing online poker sites, currently operating offshore, to also be entitled to apply for licenses.
According to media analysts, if the powerful casinos don’t put their backing behind the proposed legislation at the state level, it could end up, like Senator Reid’s bill, in the legislative graveyard.
