Efforts to Legalize and Regulate US Poker Strengthened After Black Friday
US poker players, the Poker Players Alliance and several other US poker groups are lobbying for the legalization of US internet poker, and hence the government cannot ignore the issue US online poker for long. Recently, top gaming industry executives also launched a push to persuade the government to regularize and legalize US internet poker.
Frank Fahrenkopf, who is the chief executive officer of the American Gaming Association said that although Black Friday indictments caused a drop in the volume of US poker players, it is only temporary, since a similar pattern was seen in 2006 when internet gambling was tagged with strict restrictions. Fahrenkopf also said that based on the statistics, the volume of betting will only be increasing. And when that is the case, the US government should allow for regulations that would let domestic gambling companies run internet poker games for US customers and legalize it.
Top brands and VIPs of the Gaming Industry claim that a regulation at the federal level would provide direction and certainty to the US internet poker industry and strong protection for US poker players. The executives produced a preview of meetings scheduled with top political leaders to discuss internet poker, health care, patent law, off-reservation Indian gaming, travel and tourism as well as tax credits research, and hence board members of the American Gaming Association have been coming to attend meetings with the House and its Senate leaders and William Daley.
Since 85 nations including Italy, Canada, France and UK have structures in place to deal with internet poker, the US government’s view on the same is going to be called ‘schizophrenic’ since they are also fully capable of dealing with the issue in a similar manner.
Several senate members are going to be presenting their US internet poker bills in these meetings, while the gaming industry is working on its own online poker bill. It was confirmed that this bill would be a hybrid of elements with federal oversight and state-level regulation. It envisions the federal Department of Commerce or any other agency in delegating licenses to states that can manage internet poker responsibly.
