“Online Poker Huge Moneymaker”
Growth in the online gambling industry
shows no signs of slowing down. Online poker, in particular,
is a favorite, doing more than its part in turning online
gambling into one of the Web’s biggest moneymakers.
The gaming site CasinoCity offers
evidence of the combined affection Americans feel for the
game of poker and the Internet. Americans played at approximately
53 poker web sites in the year 2003. But that number has
already risen to 266, not even two years later. Projected
revenues in the online gambling industry are for $10 billion – a 40 percent increase
over last year – but over $2 billion of that can be
credited to online poker alone. Between that and the fact
that it brings in one million new players each month, it
is clear that the game of online poker is making a huge contribution
to the success of the online gambling industry.
There are other factors leading to the explosion in this
industry, of course, including improved peer-to-peer and
wireless technology, and also an improved, more mainstream
image; online gambling has somehow managed to not only avoid
the perhaps sleazy image that once tainted the conventional
gambling halls, but to seem positively cool, trendy and hot.
Nevertheless, the road to success
is not without speed bumps, and those speed bumps come in the
form of legal obstacles. Online gambling is illegal in certain
U.S. states, and if some Congressmen get their way, it will
be illegal in all of the U.S. One senator from Arizona, Jon
Kyl, is seeing what he can do to make using the internet for
placing bets illegal; he’s
hoping that just as the Federal Wire Act of 1961 prohibited
the use of phone lines for placing bets, there is also a way
to prohibit using the internet for the same. In the meantime,
other tactics for discouraging online betting are being used
too, such as encouraging banks not to let their credit cards
be used for this online gambling activity.
Back to Online Gambling News April 2005 Edition
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