Like ripping off a bandaid, the worst may be over for large public online
gaming companies that have shut down their United States Web sites. On
Halloween, the UK government announced it has designs to regulate Internet
gambling. Critical of the U.S government decision to effectively ban gaming
transactions, UK officials said the gaming law made in haste will only drive
the industry underground. Although unhappy with the U.S. decision, sports
minister Richard Caborn said that Britain would not protect online gaming
executives from extradition requests if they took Internet bets from
countries in which they were illegal. “People have to abide by the laws of
particular countries,” he said. “We will not acknowledge people who operate
illegally.” At the UK gaming summit, 32 international delegates discussed
plans to regulate gambling and protect consumers from underage gambling and
gambling addiction. The United States was of course not present. Culture
Secretary Tessa Jowell said Britain opposed the U.S. ban, which risked
driving the industry into criminal hands. “We do not support the approach
the United States has taken,” she said at the summit. “The enormous risk of
prohibition is that it forces the industry underground,” she said, likening
the move to the U.S. ban on alcohol sales in the 1920s.
Having a vested interest in a windfall of tax revenue, the UK has done their
homework. Recent reports have shown that the online gambling market in the
UK has doubled in five years, with more than one million users regularly
betting via the internet.

Research commissioned by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
has discovered that UK gamblers make up almost one-third of Europe’s
estimated total of 3.3 million online gamblers.

According to UK government figures, Europe’s regular online gamblers stake
nearly 3.5 billion pounds a year, an average of 1,000 pounds each. The
worldwide Internet gambling market is put at more than $30 billion (16
billion pounds).