$7.5 Billion Worth of Online Casino Money
How long will Americans keep on loosing huge money that ends up in places like Antigua and Barbuda?
The industry’s Canadian-based Interactive Gaming Council estimates that thousands of cyber casinos last year raked in around $7.5 billion - half of it, at least, from Americans.
At last count, 77 nations were doing just that, and a lot of those legal Web sites are state-owned operations. Not all of those nations are Caribbean sand specks either. The list includes many of the world’s modern democracies, including Canada, Australia, the U.K. and most of the rest of the European Union. Even China and Russia are at the brink.
The United States cannot much longer stand alone against such a global tidal wave.
That, in effect, was what the World Trade Organization told the United States the other day when it ruled in favor of tiny Antigua and Barbuda in an Internet gambling restraint-of-trade case against the United States.
From Kansas City Star
December 12th, 2004 at 11:21 pm
I did not read the article but your point is a good one. Think of the economic developement this could bring if we only kept this money here in the US. I don’t really know how they come up with these figures but they say for every dollar you can expect it to have an impact multiplied by 7 times. 7.5 billion X 7 =52.5 billion.
December 13th, 2004 at 11:24 am
How long have Americans been sending billions of dollars to third-world countries for illegal drugs?
As long as the government keeps online gambling sites illegal in the U.S., the money will keep flowing out. But it doesn’t matter, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to our trade deficit. We’re in a world economy now anyway, it all comes around eventually.