USA creeping closer to legalised online casinos

The ban on online casinos in the USA could be coming to an end as rumours persist that states such as California, New Jersey and Florida could be about to change their laws to allow online casino games and poker. As www.onlinecasino.ie has reported many times the UIGEA has been responsible for banning online casinos from the USA and even arresting and jailing the former CEO of Betonsports for 33months but there could be light at the end of the tunnel for US gamblers as even the government is reported to be considering taxation and regulation of the online casino industry. Online sports betting will probably remain an illegal activity as unlike here in Europe where we consider it relatively harmless and have betting shops everywhere, in the USA it still has a stigma associated with money laundering and organised crime. Online casino operators in Europe see this as a great potential but are approaching it in different ways; 888 for example will attempt to sell software rather than approach customers directly and hence the deal with Harrah’s announced earlier at onlinecasino.ie; this is also the approach being taken by software supplier Playtech who see this as a massive opportunity. Ladbrokes is believed to be considering a bid for an online poker license in California and others such as William Hill seem undecided at present. Some online casinos have been offering free casino games in the country for some time to keep the brand name in the customers mind and they are obviously hoping that this may help their cause in getting a license if it gets that far. Not everybody is in favour of legalising online casinos; for example a number of the casinos in the USA are operated by native American tribes who only see this as a loss of business but we still do not know whether this will happen this year, next year or even 2012 but it looks like it will happen eventually.