Life Line Of The USA Internet Gambling Law
In 1996 we had an explosion of internet casinosthat swept thru the whole world. The U. S. saw a large increase in both internet casinos and players. This huge increase of online players worried the land-based casino owners and they lobbied to get it stopped or at least slowed down. They understood if this pace continued they would see more of a decrease in profits. So they lobbied Congress hard and in 2006 the US passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (or UIGEA).
The UIGEA act prohibited all of the banks and payment processors from processing any kind of transactions related to online gambling. This created a problem for gamblers in reloading and withdrawing funds from their online accounts. While the companies continued to operate they had to use payment processors that could get around such restrictions. Despite all of these laws related to online gambling, some online casinos continued to take gamblers in the US.
In contrast, many of the bigger online brands left the US market, the alternatives for players became quite limited. Many said it was tough to find a good online casino. Alot of reviews sites started to pop up that directed players to the sites they so desperately looked for. Some of those sites were superior to others, but they served the need that was created. Soon after the market started to stabilize and gamblers were playing online again, Black Friday hit the online gambling world.
Numerous casinos had found a way around the deposit and withdrawal problems and the online gambling world was growing once again. Many started to feel invincible to this new law. The government was not really enforcing it and it appeared like they had no intentions of doing so. That was certainly a false feeling of security for both the gamblers and internet casinos. April 15, 2011, will go down in history as the day the online gambling industry was punished and punished hard. It was the start of a new era. The United States Department of Justice charged the owners of the three largest poker rooms Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker with bank fraud, illegal gambling offenses, and laundering billions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds. The DOJ seized their internet domain names along with their funds. Instantly many US gamblers were not just left with nowhere to play and no way to recuperate their funds.
Black Friday forced more gambling brands to depart the US Marketplace. Everyone was once again scrambling to find new places to play, worried if they would ever get their money back, and wondering if anybody would stay in the United States market. A major blow was struck to online gambling and many wondered if it would survive. Again the rating sites played an essential role in discovering places for players to play. Now the market was very limited and it was a struggle to find online sites. Once again the market slowly started to stabilize and things settled down a bit. The market was damaged but survived.
Another major event was Gray Monday. Grey Monday saw more domain names and gambling operations seized. There was clearly two main disparities with these seizures. This time both large and small sites were seized. Several sectors in the industry were seized including online poker, casinos, sports books as well as bingo. Basically nobody was safe now. Now the size of the organization did not matter anymore. Nor did the industry you’re in. This round of seizures was felt by everyone throughout the gambling industry. The full effects of this seizure have not been felt yet but there’s now even less online us casino sites available. Will the industry survive? It remains to be seen but it’s been hit hard.
Information from Lifeline Of The USA Internet Gambling Law
