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| Las Vegas Casino Bookmakers Go
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Its now a full fifteen years since Macau surpassed Las Vegas in terms of revenue generated by the
casinos, an impressive feat when you realise that western owned casinos had only been open for 2 years when they combined to take the title of the world's
number one gambling destination. The Chinese government relinquished its state monopoly of gambling in 2002, the Sands Macau opened in 2004 and Macau took the
title in 2006. Since then the much smaller coastal chinese city on the other side of the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong has moved ahead massively and is
now generating 3-4 times as much revenue as Las Vegas.
One major problem that always troubled visitors to Las Vegas from overseas was the terrible fact
that any wins of more than just $1500 would incur gambling tax of 30%, unless you come from a country with reciprical tax agreements and you have gone to the
trouble of completing a tax exemption form. No such gambling tax exists in Macau and no reciprical tax agreement between China and the USA, so chinese punters
head almost solely to their local gambling Mecca.
So Las Vegas has been suffering in terms their customer base and relatively slow growth in gambling
revenue and yet the major operators that started and still remian in Las Vegas have been against change in terms of allowing U.S. citizens to gamble online.
They knew of course that more than $300 billion was wagered on sports each year in the U.S. with illegal bookmaking operations but didn't seem to want to give
up their precious land based bookmaking monopoly. Luckily for them, and everyone else, along came DFS, or daily fatansy sports. DFS burst onto the scene a
little over 10 years ago and quickly gained popularity due to the lack of legal online gambling.
Traditional gambling operators complained to state
prosecuters that DFS was gambling and therefore illegal to do it outside of the standard federal restrictions that applies to gambling. Unfortuanetly for them
the DFS community pushed back and with the help of New Jersey State governor, Philip D. Murphy, a United States Supreme Court decision to declare the
Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 as unconstitutional opened the doors for sports betting to take place online, not just for
DFS.
This has brought a lot of attention to the possibility of gambling online across the U.S. and is in part responsible for the
crazy vegas popularity of online casinos. Of course a pandemic closing the land casinos helped as well. So well into
the 21st century the people of the U.S.A are slowly catching up with the freedoms enjoyed by people living in the old countries of Western Europe. And due to
the supreme court decision many of the established casino operators are adding online sports betting to their portfolios and that is growing
continuously.
Around the rest of the world there is a constant ebb and flow of state intervention into online gambling and licensing to allow increased
taxation to bolster state and federal government coffers. Some like the U.K. Government went for complete freedom to offer any form of gambling around 20 years
ago, only to realise that a complete free-for-all leads to strong increases in problem gambling. After which there is a lot of negative publicity and pressure
group push-back to rein in gambling operators both land based and online.
The second way governments manipulate gambling to suit themselves is to
establish specified areas where gambling is allowed and banning it everywhere else. China and Russia are two examples where all forms of gambling are illegal
except in designated special zones, as in Macau for China and Yantarnaya in Russia. Russia has four such gambling zones but then it is a huge country. This
type of restriction does have the benefit of closer inspection but isn't particularly fair to ordinary gamblers who can't afford expensive trips.
More
conservative countries go for the “we are scared” approach. For example if you wanted to find online casinos
newzealand you might have some trouble as the government of New Zealand want you to go to one of their taxed land based casinos or racetracks. The biggest
player in their gambling market is of course the state run operations and although they do give a share of the profits to the local communities the six land
casinos in NZ are very profitable for the state.
Conclusion
The USA will continue to
bring gambling online as state after stae realises just how much tax they have been missing. Until, that is, a presidential candidate runs on a ticket of
social responsibilty and begins a losing fight against the big money to increase gambling restictions in the U.S. once more.
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