Gamblor’s World

Online gambling makes it that much easier to lay down a quick hundred on Indianapolis Colts to win the Super Bowl
Curtis Stock, The Edmonton Journal; With files from CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, February 20, 2007
EDMONTON

Just one keystroke on your computer and you’ve got a bet down on the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl.

Click again, and you’ve bet (some might say with your heart) on the hometown Edmonton Oilers.

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The ease of accessibility to online gambling sites have made it a popular option with the betting folk, especially in Canada.
Shaughn Butts, The Journal

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Font: ****Don’t like the way the Super Bowl is going? Click again and make another wager at halftime.

Still not enough action? No problem. Play poker online while you watch the games you’ve bet on.

All this without ever leaving your house, or even getting dressed. All you need is a computer and a credit card to get some action on one of the hundreds of Internet gambling sites floating out there in cyberspace. It could be one in the afternoon or three in the morning.

The Internet is Las Vegas — no clocks, open 24 hours, seven days a week.

And that — the unfettered accessibility of gambling over the Internet — is turning out to be a potentially huge problem.

EASE OF ACCESS

Two University of Lethbridge professors, midway through what will be the world’s largest study of Internet gambling, are finding that the ease of access for sports bettors on the Internet is attracting far more problem gamblers than they initially feared.

“The indication is that those who gamble on the Internet are 10 times more likely to be problem gamblers than those who use other forms of gambling,” said Robert Williams, who is conducting the Lethbridge study with Robert Wood.

While other surveys indicate 3.5 per cent of the population are problem gamblers, this study of 13,000 Canadians and several thousand others worldwide indicates that 10 per cent of the people who gamble on the Internet fall into the at-risk/problem gambler category.

At-risk gamblers are defined as anyone who gambles daily and exhibits one of the 12 problem-gambling characteristics. Or, people who gamble less frequently, but exhibit two or more of some of these behaviours — gambling to recoup lost gambling money, feeling bad about gambling, borrowing money to gamble and gambling more than planned.

GAMBLE IN YOUR BIRTHDAY SUIT

“It’s a whole different ball game of gambling,” said Arnie Wexler, a certified compulsive gambling counsellor. “You can wake up in the middle of the night in your birthday suit, go to the computer and start gambling. You don’t need gas. You don’t need a phone and you are off and running and in a gambling establishment.

“It’s easier to gamble (on the Internet) than it is to buy a can of beer or a pack of cigarettes.”

Gambling sites first surfaced on the Internet a little more than a decade ago. In those early years, there were about 30 sites that took in $17 million.

Since then, gambling on the Internet has literally exploded, with hundreds of gambling sites swallowing up an

estimated $15 billion in revenues. Merrill Lynch predicts that total will grow to $48 billion by 2010.

Since betting on sports is illegal in Canada (unless you place your wager through the government-sanctioned Sport Select system), most of the Internet web sites are located offshore in places like Antigua, Gibraltar and

Costa Rica — jurisdictions that permit gambling that are beyond the legal range of Canadian and North American lawmakers.

The amount you can bet and the sports you can bet on are almost limitless on these sites. You can bet on a team, bet on total points, which player scores the first touchdown, the winning margin, you name it. Thegreek.com took wagers on just about every Olympic sport in Turin last year, even curling.

Bwin.com takes action on many sports, including every conceivable pro and semi-pro hockey league and some amateur ones — like the Alberta Junior Hockey League and the Alberta Golden Bears in the Canadian Interuniversity Sports realm. One of the gambling giants is Bodog.com, which was founded by Lloydminster native Calvin Ayre.

Not all the sites are offshore. Another of the largest Internet gambling jurisdictions is just outside Montreal on the Kahnawake Mohawk First Nations reserve — Mohawk Internet Technologies (MIT).

With some 60 customers, MIT has most of the world’s top casino and poker sites. In 2005, MIT, which pays no taxes, made $17 million US on revenues of $24.7 million. The Kahnawake Mohawk First Nation insists it is not illegal to operate the sites there even though gambling in other parts of Canada is illegal. They

insist they maintain sovereign authority over Internet gambling on their territory, arguing gambling is part of their ancient rites and traditions.

Alexander First Nation, near Morinville, makes the same argument here in Alberta as it proposes to set up its own gambling commission, regulating and offering licences to Internet gambling operators.

No matter where the server for the sports gambling site is located, the lawfulness of such an enterprise is definitely a grey area. Talk to 10 different industry insiders or lawyers or politicians, and you’ll get 10 different answers.

So while it does seem clear that operating an Internet gambling site in Canada (except, perhaps, on reserves) is illegal, there is still some debate about whether a bet placed by a Canadian bettor to an offshore site is on the up and up.

NO CASES BEFORE COURTS

One of the problems is that the laws governing gambling were developed years before the Internet even existed, and there have been no cases go before the courts to set a legal precedent for Internet gambling. In fact, according to Bill Thompson, a professor at the University of Nevada and author of Gambling America: an Encyclopedia, only one player — in the United States — has ever been prosecuted for gambling on the

Internet that he’s aware of. And even with him, the fact that he was caught was purely accidental, Thompson says. The culprit was actually being investigated for something else, and investigators caught him betting on the Internet.

But the legality of Internet gambling may be a moot point for another reason, according to Hugh Leuden, head of investigations for the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission.

“There is no way to enforce it,” Leuden explains. “I’d have to be sitting in your house.”

The legal debate is of little concern to bettors, who continue their wagering unabated. Most won’t know who is taking their bets. Most wouldn’t know or care where the gambling site is located.

And most don’t believe they will ever lose their shirts.

That’s where Williams’s and Wood’s concern over the high rate of Internet problem gamblers comes in.

The two Lethbridge researchers have also unearthed another concern — how young the Internet gamblers seem to be. Astonishingly, half the Internet gamblers in their study are age 21 or younger. The research also indicates that 80 per cent of the gamblers are male and that online poker, which generates an estimated $100 million a day in revenue, is by far the most popular form of Internet gambling. Many don’t consider poker a sport, but you can find TV poker games on all-sports channels almost any time of the day.

POKER ENTICING TO YOUNG ADULTS

Poker can be especially enticing to young adults because it’s been made to look cool on TV and many kids perceive it the way they do an X-Box or a Play Station — as a game of skill.

It’s not surprising that the younger set is embracing Internet gambling so eagerly given that they are the first generation raised in an environment where people have been actually able to bet on sports legally, and because they are computer savvy.

“There will always be new blood out there — young people more familiar with the Internet,” says Christopher Costigan, who resides in Miami, but has the servers for www.911Gambling.com in Lloydminster, Alberta.

Costigan says he worries about the gambling sites for money, but also about the many free-play sites, which are advertised at live sporting events and extensively on TV.

“Supposedly that is where people can go to practise their skill,” says Costigan. “What they actually are is a devious way of getting people to play real games. An awful lot of young people go to these free play sites.”

What it all adds up to is the potential social costs of an activity that now rages virtually unchecked.

As University of Alberta gaming expert Garry Smith warns: “A click of your mouse and you can lose your house.”

cstock@thejournal.canwest.com

U.S. LAWMAKERS FIGHT BACK

The online gaming industry has been on a long winning streak since the first betting sites surfaced on the Internet 12 years ago.

But in the United States, lawmakers have fought back with a new bill that makes it illegal for banks and credit card companies to settle payments to Internet gaming sites.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was signed by U.S. President George Bush last October.

No such legislation is on the books in Canada, however.

“The bottom line is the law has not criminalized gaming, (in the U.S.) which is what a lot of people think,” says Michael Lipton, a lawyer from the Toronto firm Elkind & Lipton LLP who specializes in gaming law.

“They have only tried to stop the flow of money.”

The effect the U.S. legislation will have on the online gaming industry is still uncertain. But on the same day the Act was passed, two major British gaming companies, Sportingbet PLC and Leisure & Gaming PLC, sold their lucrative U.S. operations for $1 each, ridding themselves of a combined $20 million in liabilities they would have incurred in firing some 800 employees.