European organizations which support more liberal regulations for online casinos have long said that players will ultimately benefit from a competitive market.

The UK casino industry, such as www.jackpotcity.com/uk/, thrives in a market where government pressure comes only in the form of player protections. France employs a system under which players have a choice between licensed independent operators which pay taxes and outright state owned casinos, where profits go straight to the government. Germany’s system is anything but competitive though. No independently operated casinos are allowed in Germany, and Germans are only given the option of a handful of state run outlets. So what most Germans do is simply break the law, and in huge numbers. Almost nobody plays at the state run casinos, which is said to be the result of stagnation brought on by a lack of any legal competition. Some 94% of German bets placed at online gambling venues were placed with unlicensed operators from outside of Germany. This has led many in Germany to question the gambling laws that are preventing Germany from benefiting from the nearly 8 billion euros being wagered in Germany. Add to this the results of several recent ECJ rulings and it is expected that we will soon see a change in Germany’s online gambling laws.

It’s no secret that the 2006 UIGEA is largely a failure. Americans are still playing online, despite the many obstacles that have been put in place. People like to play casino games, and they really seem to like playing them online. UIGEA has been vague and very difficult to enforce. As has been pointed out, it places most of the burden of enforcement on banks, something they are ill prepared and unwilling to do. So, what is now being proposed is a system similar to those being implemented in Europe, where online casinos are given

 

 

licenses to operate in the country and that way even if the company is located outside of the country, not all of the money will be leaving the local economy. US lawmakers who had supported the UIGEA ban had stated repeatedly that the money being lost to overseas operators was not the reason for the ban. The reason given for the ban was to protect players from things like fraud and problem gambling. The problem is, Americans are still playing online, at least $5 billion per year is still going to foreign operators, and since they are unlicensed, there is no way to force them to conform to any set of regulations. The argument then is that since people are going to play online anyway, there might as well be a system in place to make sure that they are cheated and also for the government to make money off of it.