2 4 April 2003

News:

Las Vegas Sands Inc, the owners of the Venetian, one of the largest casino hotel resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, has received an electronic betting centre and interactive gaming licence for its wholly owned subsidiary VI Limited from the Alderney Gambling Control Commission.

The European gaming sector may be facing “a Copernican revolution” following the opinion, given by the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice in the Gambelli case, that Italian legislation restricting sports betting is an unjustified obstruction to the freedom to provide services throughout the EU.

Sportingbet is set to appeal against a South Australia Supreme Court judgment which ordered the company to pay £1 million compensation and £300,000 in costs to K&S Corporation. The case arose following the arrest of Dennis Telford, K&S Corporation’s company secretary for an alleged A$22 million fraud involving the company which is part of Australian tycoon Alan Scott’s business group.

Features:

“Faceless bootleggers raping the sport ....” This is the way in which John Schreck, a consultant to the Hong Kong Jockey Club described betting exchanges in a recent television panel discussion. Person-to-person betting has become a multi-million pound phenomenon over the last three years and, not surprisingly, traditional bookmakers and racing industry stalwarts have become very hot under the collar. However, in the UK, if the tax position pans out bookmakers will no doubt be joining rather than attempting to beat the betting exchanges.

Gambling is currently one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment in the world, particularly now when governments, including various states in the U.S., are exploring other means to produce revenue. Internet gambling, however, has not been provided an opportunity for expansion and in fact U.S. policy continues to restrict some of the world’s most respected companies from being competitive in this industry. This is in spite of statistics that show an estimated 1,800 gaming websites with a projected gross income of $4.3 billion for 2003.

In his opinion of 13 March 2003, European Court of Justice Advocate-General Siegbert Alber supported the thesis that the Italian legislation concerning sports betting constituted a non-justified obstacle to the freedom to provide services throughout the European Union.

This article by Representative John Conyers Jr outlines the logic behind the Bill he has introduced in the US House of Representatives, which calls for the establishment of a Commission to examine the regulation of online gambling.

Last month I discussed the question of why to have enforcement at all. The article went on to explain the base technology of an internet gambling site and started to look at some aspects of a site, such as player protection and payments and the question of how the internet gambling site operator is able to deal with the adage, “Know Your Customer”. This article goes on to examine these issues in more detail.

This article looks at the current legal and regulatory position of online gambling in Canada. The Starnet Case, involving a part Vancouver, part Antigua-based operation is reviewed, along with the Prince Edward Island Reference concerning a province-authorised lottery. The legal status of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission is also analysed.