Can Online Betting Change Its Luck?

Found on Business Week on Tuesday, 14 December 2004
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The U.S. Attorney in St. Louis was demanding that the Chicago tabloid turn over its accounting records, e-mails, and phone logs related to ads from online gambling outfits -- ads that sports papers like PFW had run for nearly a decade.

In September, 2003, Arkush caved: He pulled the ads, took a $2 million revenue hit, and laid off 22% of his staff. "It has been a pretty miserable year," he says. "We're not breaking any laws, but who wants to battle the Justice Dept.?"

The Justice campaign has sent a chill through several industries despite the fact that there is no explicit federal law against online gaming -- something lawmakers want to remedy.

"Our revenues are greater than Yahoo!'s (YHOO ). Our profits are greater than Amazon's. It's ridiculous," says Alex Czajkowski, marketing director for Sporting Bet PLC in London, which processed $2.5 billion in wagers last fiscal year for a $39.5 million operating profit.

On Nov. 10, Antigua won a World Trade Organization ruling that the U.S. violates international trade rules by, among other things, allowing credit cards to be used for domestic gambling but not online wagering.

This is getting more and more ridiculous. Fights against gamblig, P2P and porn are almost every day in the news. That and assaults against privacy by demanding more surveillance and less privacy rights for people. Maybe the US should just shut its borders for a decade and wait until some people with brains are in charge.