U.S Gaming Congress Discuss eGaming

On May the 16 and 17 Atlantic City hosted the 16th Annual East Coast Gaming Congress. Industry leaders discussed, provided insights and expressed their concerns. The legalization of internet gambling is one of the topics that has been discussed a lot of late in the United States.

US Congress Divided 

Chairman of US Digital Gaming, Richard Bronson said that it’s going to take a while before online gambling is legalized in the United States since the US congress is still too divided at this stage. He stated, “In a Congress that can’t agree on what day it is, the thought that they’re going to agree to put casino gambling in every living room in America is presumptuous.” Bronson mentioned that the only way forward is for individual states to impose their own laws. He’s quite positive that a couple of US states will legalize online gambling before this year is out and also said that  New Jersey is the most likely candidate. Bronson reiterated that legalized online gambling has huge commercial value and pointed out that Las Vegas received 40 million visitors last year, Facebook on the other hand receives 40 million visits every 5 days. It’s the ideal platform to generate revenues, profits and taxes and to ignore it would just be plain stupid.

New Jersey Gambling

One of the speakers at the Annual East Coast Conference was Senator Ray Lesniak from New Jersey. He notified delegates that the governor’s veto of a bill that has proven to be very costly for New Jersey. Lesniak said, “We lost a whole year and hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been coming in to our casinos in Atlantic City.” The senator introduced another new bill this year, apparently the governor supports the bill this time round.

Spectrum Gaming consultancy representative, Eugene Johnson said that everyone is jockeying for position when it comes to online gambling. Various European operators have approached Spectrum Gaming. He agrees with Bronson that within a space of a few years regulated state online gambling will become a reality in America. Johnson dubbed online gambling “the wave of the future” and the younger generation will gamble more and more on mobile handsets. He concluded, “If you don’t evolve with the future, you’re going to be left behind.”

European Operators

Irish internet gaming company Paddy Power is just one of the European based operators Johnson spoke to. Paddy Power has offices in the US and currently locked in discussions with various potential American partners. President of Paddy Power North America, Eamonn Toland believes that online gambling will be legalized in the US within the foreseeable future and land-based casinos will form partnerships with online gaming sites.