As one of the world’s largest and most popular entertainment and news sites
focusing on “events” betting odds, whether that be related to sports,
political elections, celebrity breakups, awards shows and so on,
Gambling911.com realizes the need for clarity in laws imposed by local,
state, country jurisdictions. As such, through extensive research, we offer
our readers an easy-to-follow breakdown of current laws and restrictions
pertaining to online gambling.
Ambiguity is not just present in US law – which has been a main focus of
late as it relates to online gambling – there are jurisdictions throughout
the world that allow betting on some forms of activity and not others. Some
online gambling jurisdictions do not allow betting with online casinos and
sportsbooks located in the country itself by their own citizens while taking
bets from outside the nation are okay and placing bets outside the nation is
not clearly illegal. France reportedly has no laws prohibiting its citizens
from betting online with gambling sites located outside the country but has
been aggressively going after those individuals who run said sites (even
outside the country – similar to the stance of the US). Recently, a law
passed on the US Federal level clarifies that the acceptance of bets on US
soil remains illegal but has now been adapted to the internet. The law
further seeks to have banking institutions monitor such transactions that
may be made from US citizens in order to prevent operators from collecting
said betting funds. However, the banks and others have been lobbying to
remove such language from this law that would hold financial institutions
liable. Legislators have admitted that the wording in this law needs to be
studied over the next several months. Poker may still be exempt from this
measure, though that is yet to be determined as of January 30, 2007. For
actual gamblers/bettors, the law is not applicable to them. Amazingly,
under the new US law, gamblers themselves will not be held liable. The law
only serves to focus on bet-takers and banks. This is why with US law, we
will focus on individual states appearing below. This report focuses
exclusively on the placement of bets in various jurisdictions with the
knowledge that many of our readers may be interested in gambling online (as
opposed to taking bets from others). Clearly, it is illegal for anyone in
the US to operate an online casino or sportsbook within US borders.
Likewise, it is illegal for anyone to physically collect money from another
individual that relates to the proceeds derived from online gambling.
Furthermore, our focus is on individual states within the US since we are
unaware of any internet-specific laws outside the US pertaining to the
actual bettor.