Online Gambling Not Just Yet

January 28, 2008

The Nevada Gaming Control recently ran a survey to judge the interest of residents in legalizing online gambling within the state. They had the University of Nevada Las Vegas run the survey to see how many had an interest in it being legalized, and how many of them had participated in online gambling in the past.

The survey showed that only 3.7% of residents have participated in any kind of online gambling over the past five years. The survey also showed that 65.4% of residents had very little interest in online gambling at all.

There seems to be some sort of an exemption to the Federal Law in reference to online gambling, and that they might be able to legalize it in their state even if the rest of the country does not participate in it. They wanted to know if it was worth pursuing legalizing it; if there were a lot of people who wanted that to happen.

They say that if they did legalize online gambling, very little of the population would likely take part in it, and if they did the chances of an increase in gambling addiction are slim at best. They say that with so little people interested it is not likely that legalizing the online gambling would all of a sudden cause people to start gambling where they did not before.

Those that are interested include other online gambling venues like horse racing. They suggested that the state look into the regulation of it just for Nevada, as they feel that there would be enough people to make it worthwhile. Because the UIGEA made it difficult for people to gamble online, but still allowed for the states to make their own rules regarding online gambling, Nevada could end up as the only state in the nation that had legal online gambling.

Back to January 2008 Archive.