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Feb. 27th, 2007 12:40 pmI see that the French authorities have asked to interview John Anderson, CEO of 888 Holdings until late last year. This is a salutary reminder that the moves late last September in the US are not necessarily restricted to the US. Online gambling (with which, I fear, poker must accept that it will be lumped) in most countries is either illegal, possibly illegal, or only legal because the government concerned has never got around to making it illegal. The only online gambling which governments don't mind making legal is one from which they derive tax revenue.
Be sure of one thing, the morality of the matter has nothing to do with it. This is all about tax revenue. UK MPs can pontificate at length (and usually do) about the money people lose on the Internet casinos, and yet say nothing about the people I see putting up to a hundred quid (probably more than half their take-home wages) on lottery tickets. Perhaps the MPs imagine that those people punting most of their cash on lottery tickets have a particular affinity for the good causes that benefit from the lottery, but I somehow doubt it.
No, what pisses all politicians off about online gambling is that some people are making a lot of money out of this, and the government (whichever government you choose) is making nothing.
It strikes me as inevitable that if Party and Stars focus on Germany and France, then the take from these countries will go up, and the governments (far more interventionist when it comes to tax revenues than they are in the US) will then sit up and take notice.
Is the depressing prognosis therefore, the end of online gambling?
Well, that's one possibility. The other possible horror is that the established businesses (Harrah's, MGM Mirage, Ladbrokes, etc) will be given a free pass (I mean, look how the Chancellor took it up the arse on the change in UK betting tax rules) and will create country-specific online gambling sites. For the poker player, this is little short of disastrous, because it drastically reduces liquidity. But I can't see how poker will be excepted, because legislators simply don't understand poker.
The Internet is causing federal states a number of problems when it comes to revenue and online gambling is focusing these. A logical solution for governments would be to grant licences to their pet companies, and then to collect the taxes from those pet companies. Betfair already has a separate "Australia account" for when you want to bet on Australian events. Already it's becoming harder for me to be a "two-currency" person, effectively functioning in dollars and sterling. Countries are beginning to fight back against the globalisation of the Internet, because they can see their revenue shrinking if the world becomes much more "global". Companies already know how to minimize tax bills (five of the top 10 companies in the FTSE 100 paid no corporation tax last year, I believe...) and now the democratization of the world via the web means that individuals are finding it easier to follow a similar path.
Online gambling, meanwhile, finds itself in the front line, and online poker is a mere subsset of that caught in the crossfire. Governments don't "have it in" for online poker; it's just something that's caught up as an innocent bystander in a much bigger battle.
Be sure of one thing, the morality of the matter has nothing to do with it. This is all about tax revenue. UK MPs can pontificate at length (and usually do) about the money people lose on the Internet casinos, and yet say nothing about the people I see putting up to a hundred quid (probably more than half their take-home wages) on lottery tickets. Perhaps the MPs imagine that those people punting most of their cash on lottery tickets have a particular affinity for the good causes that benefit from the lottery, but I somehow doubt it.
No, what pisses all politicians off about online gambling is that some people are making a lot of money out of this, and the government (whichever government you choose) is making nothing.
It strikes me as inevitable that if Party and Stars focus on Germany and France, then the take from these countries will go up, and the governments (far more interventionist when it comes to tax revenues than they are in the US) will then sit up and take notice.
Is the depressing prognosis therefore, the end of online gambling?
Well, that's one possibility. The other possible horror is that the established businesses (Harrah's, MGM Mirage, Ladbrokes, etc) will be given a free pass (I mean, look how the Chancellor took it up the arse on the change in UK betting tax rules) and will create country-specific online gambling sites. For the poker player, this is little short of disastrous, because it drastically reduces liquidity. But I can't see how poker will be excepted, because legislators simply don't understand poker.
The Internet is causing federal states a number of problems when it comes to revenue and online gambling is focusing these. A logical solution for governments would be to grant licences to their pet companies, and then to collect the taxes from those pet companies. Betfair already has a separate "Australia account" for when you want to bet on Australian events. Already it's becoming harder for me to be a "two-currency" person, effectively functioning in dollars and sterling. Countries are beginning to fight back against the globalisation of the Internet, because they can see their revenue shrinking if the world becomes much more "global". Companies already know how to minimize tax bills (five of the top 10 companies in the FTSE 100 paid no corporation tax last year, I believe...) and now the democratization of the world via the web means that individuals are finding it easier to follow a similar path.
Online gambling, meanwhile, finds itself in the front line, and online poker is a mere subsset of that caught in the crossfire. Governments don't "have it in" for online poker; it's just something that's caught up as an innocent bystander in a much bigger battle.
