There was great euphoria in some quarters after the announcement of the delay in the full implementation of UIGEA.
The six month period of breathing space that has been given by the United States administration was met with varying degrees of relief from virtually everybody attached to the online casino industry in any way.
The banking industry also seems to be quite relieved at not having to implement the aspects of UIGEA that deal with the movement of money at this time.
With the start of the new week, everybody seems to now realize that this 6 month grace period is actually a very short period of time. The excitement has died away and the realization has set in that the clock is ticking.
Ultimately, everybody hopes that Barney Frank’s bill becomes the basis for a news regulatory framework but rather that the pressure going away, it’s really only getting started.
Fearful punters are extremely happy about the the U.S. Government’s delay of the implementation of UIGEA. There had been some movements in recent times that showed that targeting individual patrons was going to be a big part of the equation from a law enforcement point of view.
Obviously punters were very worried about this and this delay of the implementation of UIGEA has alleviated the stress from this particular set of circumstances.
For the most part, the online casino industry has been a bit more circumspect in its response to the announcement. People within the industry also realize that while this is excellent news, it is still only a six month period.
The wheels of the legislative process in Washington move very slowly and six months is a very short period of time in this sort of context.
While there is a lot of support for Barney Frank’s bill, there is still a lot of work to be done and only a short window of time in which to do it.
All in all, the news is good but the pressure is still very much on.
The United States government has officially decided to delay implementation of UIGEA (the online gambling ban) for six months.
On top of all the smaller elements that went to towards the making of this decision, there are two main factors that seem to have driven the thinking here.
Firstly, we have Barney Frank’s bill to legalize, regulate and tax online gambling. This bill has been gaining a lot of support recently and it does certainly seem to make sense to wait while so much momentum is gathering to drive the situation in the opposite direction.
Secondly, a large part of the implementation of UIGEA would revolve around tracking the movement of money and in particular at an individual consumer level. This type of activity would require a massive commitment from banks both in terms of human and infrastructural resources.
The banking industry is already in a very fragile state at this time and the government seems to have been of the view that putting this kind of additional pressure on the domestic financial system at this time would not be in the best interests of the country.
In legislative terms six months is a very short period of time but it is nonetheless a window of time in which it is now possible for something positive to happen.
Online casinos have been finding it difficult to find good places to advertise for the last couple of years. Because of the 2006 online gambling ban in the United States, many of the better ways to generate traffic on the Net such as Google do not accept online casino ads.
Many of the other pay per click search engines have followed suit and this has made it very difficult for online casino to find places to advertise that will actually bring in a good quality of visitors that will convert into customers at a reasonable rate.
Over the last few months though, online casino ad seem to be turning up on all sorts of sites that, according to their policies, do not allow them.
The reasons for this are unclear at this time. It may simply be that some casino are sneaking ads past the filters.
Another possibility is that some of these sites are actually allowing it but doing it in an off the radar fashion.
It is likely that 2010 will be the year that a regulatory environment is introduced in the United States. Any advertising portal that has positioned itself as a friend of the industry and is producing the results would stand to profit in an astronomical way from any legislative changes.
Whatever the reasons, one thing is clear, we are seeing a lot more ads for online casino on sites that say they do not allow them.
Thursday December 3rd has been set as the day for the commencement of discussions on Barney Frank’s bill to introduce a regulatory environment of the online casino industry.
This type of discussion will not necessarily lead to legislation but it is definitely a large step in the right direction.
The 2006 online gambling ban is a topic that we have written about here on many occasions. There have been many twists in the road along the way. For example, the global economic downturn has caused the issue to be put to one side at some stages and has actually pushed the process along at others.
As mentioned, these new discussions will not lead directly to a new law but they are a formal and very definite move in the right direction.
Sports betting sites have been seeing an unusually high level of activity on Manchester United qualifying top of their group in the UEFA Champions league. The really unusual thing abut this is the fact that many people are betting against United in this case.
United have already qualified for the knockout stage of the competition but still need a result tonight to ensure that they finish top of their group.
It would appear that many punters have looked at the long odds on Man. Utd. finishing second and decided that it’s worth a punt. The Manchester United manager, Sir. Alex Ferguson is likely to field a weakened side for tonight’s clash at Old Trafford against Besiktas but most pundits would still consider it to be an optimistic view that the Turkish club will get anything from the match.
Besiktas coach, Denizli, has been under a lot of pressure recently abut his job at the Turkish club and will certainly be hoping that his team do well in this match but even taking these elements into account, it’s still a long shot that Manchester United will not finish up top of the group at the end of the night.
Today was was certainly not one of the better days for the big names in the online casino sector with most seeing some deterioration in their share price and some being clobbered very heavily.
Paddy Power finished the day at 24.075 which is 0.125 down on the previous day’s closing price or 0.52%. This was actually one of the shares that held up reasonably well.
The share price of William Hill was another one that experienced a relatively modest dip in the share price finishing the day at 184.8554 which is down 0.88%.
255.00 is where Partygaming finished the day and that is 2.50 or 0.97% down from Monday’s closing price.
The biggest loser over the course of the day today was Cryptologic with a very significant 8.52% drop in the share price. That is 0.30 down and finished at 3.22.
In the context of the overall sector it was a negative trading day but not a particularly heavy one.
It wasn’t that long ago that Poland was considering raising the rates of taxation on online gambling. Now the country has decided to go in the opposite direction altogether and introduce an online gambling ban instead.
Recently, we reported here about this as first news of the potential ban started to come through and now it would appear that this measure is actually going ahead.
Several officials and elected representatives in the Polish Government has been dogged by numerous corruption allegations that have involved connections with figures in the online gambling industry.
Some commentators have suggested that the timing of this ban appears to be very curious given the recent difficulties that the government has been facing in this area. Also, when one considers this in the context of the idea that this is also an about face in policy, there do seem to be a number of issues for which satisfactory answers have not really been forthcoming.
Other countries have recently introduced similar bans been experiencing severe difficulties with implementing them so we will have to wait to see if the Polish authorities do any better.
It may have escaped the notice of people who were not paying that much attention but a topic that President Obama touched on a few times last week during his visit to China was Internet freedom.
China has some of the most severe restrictions of any country on freedom of Internet access. For example, if one types in “tankman” to any of the major search engine, the vast majority of results will be to do with the protester in Tienanmen Square in Beijing who stood in front of advancing tanks and became the focus of some of the most iconic images of the late 20th century.
Type “tankman” into a search engine in China and one would be lucky to find a single reference to this protester. And, it’s not just the local Chinese search engines. The major international ones such as Google and Yahoo have also censored their results in return for access to the Chinese market.
While it’s all good for President Obama to be commenting on censorship in this regard, it might be easier to take it seriously it there were not a glaring censorship issue with regard to allowing U.S. citizens access to online casinos.
This is not to suggest that President Obama should be singled out for this type of criticism, he is only one in a long line of politicians who have engaged in this kind of “a la carte” approach to censorship.
The Ohio State V Michigan game 2009 would appear to many outside of The United States to be something that would have a strong appeal within the continental U.S. but in actual fact the game has a far broader international appeal.
We have had reports that the game has seen very heavy betting at international online sports betting sites.
The most obvious reason for this would be that the game has simply caught the imagination of sports fans around the world but there are probably some other factors at play as well.
Firstly, there are large numbers of U.S. citizens that live overseas both in civilian and military capacities and many of these would reside in jurisdictions where sports gambling is legal.
Another reason may simply be that large number of Americans are simply flouting the online gambling ban in the United States despite recent efforts by the Department Of Justice to target individual users of online betting and online casino sites.
Whatever combination of factors is at play here, one thing is for sure, The Ohio State V Michigan game is certainly seeing a lot of action all around the world.
